The February Jobs Report

[Pistarkle]

The Department of Labor reported that “employers added 227,000 jobs in February and the “unemployment rate remained at 8.3%”. According to an article on money.cnn.com “job growth was still better than expected. Economists surveyed by CNNMoney had predicted 210,000 jobs added in the month. Additional Department of Labor job statistics follow:

1. Since March, 2010 private businesses have consistently added jobs with 233,000 jobs added in February.
2. Professional and business services added 82,000 jobs.
3. The manufacturing sector added 31,000 jobs.
4. Health care added 61,000 jobs
5. Restaurants and bars added 41,000

Huffington post.com stated that “over the past three months, you get payrolls adding 245,000 per month, a SIGNIFICANT ACCELERATION over the comparable value a year ago of 150,000 per month. Money.cnn.com reported that “the American economy lost 8.8 million jobs during the financial crisis, and has since added back 3.5 million jobs.”

Here’s the part where YOU CAN CREATE MORE JOBS, cnn.com reported that “government job losses have been offsetting some of the private sector gains, with most of the bleeding at the state and local levels." If you’ve been following my posts, you, already, know what my next point will be….

Tell Tea Partied Republican House leaders BOEHNER and CANTOR to allow the PRESIDENT’S JOBS BILL to come to the floor of the House for a vote at www.house.gov and/or www.congress.gov

[denverbill]

1. I wonder how many total government jobs have been lost since 2008?

And what the unemployment rate would be without those losses.

[mathematic]

2. Not many, in the grand scheme of things

Total government employment from 2/08 to 2/12 declined by about 400k, from 22.7 mil to 22.3 mil. If all of those people became unemployed (as opposed to retired) then that would account for no more than a .3 bump in the unemployment rate. My guess is that most of these were due to retirements so the unemployment rate would likely increase by no more than .1.

Additionally, average government employment in 08, 09, and 10 was about 22.5 mil each year. Last year was 22.1, which was halfway between the '06 and '07 levels. So total government employment was high during the recession and began to decline as private sector employment picked up.

To break it down a bit more from 2/08 to 2/12, the federal level gained 75k jobs, the state level lost 90k jobs, and the local level (which accounts for 2/3rds of total government jobs) lost 410k jobs, split evenly between education and non-education.

All data from the BLS and not seasonally adjusted (since I'm comparing year-over-year and yearly averages).