I could really use a little bit of help regarding employment statistics.

[Systematic Chaos]

Can someone please provide a link which shows how private sector employment has been stagnant since Chimpy took over, while government has expanded out the wazoo? I searched for a while and couldn't get quite the data I was looking for.

Yes, this is one of those "I'm in an argument with some right-wing cretin on another message board and I need some help" threads. :)

Thank you in advance for any help you may provide.

[TahitiNut]

1. The CES statistics are easily obtained from BLS here ...

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ce

Check (select) both "Government Employment - Seasonally Adjusted - CES9000000001" and "Government Employment - Seasonally Adjusted - CES9000000001" and click the 'Retrieve data' button. You'll see two tables of employment numbers, the first being private and the second being government. You can then check "include graphs" and click on 'Go' to see graphs.

You can note that the level of employment in government (which includes both state and federal jobs and that includes teachers, police, and military) has never declined in the last 10 years, and increased at rapid rates during the initial years of the Cheney/Bush administration even while private sector employment was dropping.

One word of caution - these statistics are derived from the CES and are projected based upon a variety of assumptions from a statistical model in which changes are made periodically. Thus, some trend anomalies are the result of changing statistical assumptions and techniques. The longer term trending, however, is clear. There are no "better" statistical sources and anyone who employs statistics in their analysis of employment uses the BLS/CES as their source.

[Systematic Chaos]

2. Mucho grassy ass!

I was on that site and must have missed what you're pointing out to me. It is a bit of a confusing place at first. :)