Statistics on Government employment

The conflict between the political Left and the political Right, played out over the various media, mainly revolves around the size of the government. Specifically, the Left argues that in an era of high unemployment and slow economic growth, the government should spend more and take on more activities in order to lift aggregate demand and increase economic growth. The Right argues that, far from being energized, now is the time for the government to step back and let the private sector do its job of increasing investment, and thereby, employment. 


This post has nothing to do with resolving this conflict. 


Instead, it has something to do with the nagging conflict inside TheEconomizer's guts. One of the Left's main evidence for saying that Barack Obama should spend more government money and do more to electrify the economy is that government employment -- authors continually state "at all levels of government," meaning state, local and federal -- has fallen year-on-year starting in March 2011. This is not the record -- no, nobody can claim that it is -- of a man who is determined to expand the state apparatus to ensnare individual lives. 


But TheEconomizer could not sleep. Really? Aren't they supposed to count only Federal employment, as it is the one most directly influenced by the Left's Deliverer? So TheEconomizer has spent considerable time and talent culling data from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics and has come up with the table at the end of this post. (I mistakenly pasted it before finishing the post, and I can't undo it any more. So forgive the inconvenient reference to the Table.) 


It turns out that the change has only recently happened. Year-on-year March 2011 up to June 2011, but none of the other months show a decline. ALL of the months in 2009 (Obama assumed office in January 2009), 2010 and January and February 2011 all posted increases in Federal employment. 


At a stroke, TheEconomizer's gut feel is vindicated. There is nothing to the allegations of lower government employment in the time of Obama. 


But this is not all there is, yet. What should be done is to compare the change and level of Federal-government employment with those of total private-sector employment in the relevant periods, in order to see if a more robust relationship can be observed. Also, there is something to the view that state and local government employment should be looked at also, because these entities receive considerable Federal aid, and in any case respond to policy directions at the Federal level. 


Alas, TheEconomizer has run out of time. Such delimitations will have to wait a few more days or weeks, but as of the moment, the main point of this blog post should be reiterated: Federal-government employment has increased, not decreased, in 26 out of 30 months of the Obama presidency. THAT is the record of this statist, ideological President.