Thursday, August 20, 2009

Government Jobs Have Grown Since Recession - NYTimes.com

Government Jobs Have Grown Since Recession - NYTimes.com: "While the private sector has shed 6.9 million jobs since the beginning of the recession, state and local governments have expanded their payrolls and added 110,000 jobs, according to a report to be issued Thursday by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government...The report offered several possible explanations for the disparity between the private and public sectors. It noted that there can be a short lag between an economic downturn and the time it hits states in the form of lower tax collections, and an even longer delay before the problems hit local governments in the form of reduced state aid and lower property tax collections. It pointed to the slow pace of decision-making in many states, and the power yielded by politically influential unions. But it also noted that the demand for many government services rises in a recession, and said that billions of dollars of federal stimulus money sent to states helped them avert layoffs."
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Interesting. It seems that some nations may be coming out of the recession--Germany, France, Japan--but we will see how the US fares, with the massive stimulus spending that can help in the short term and hurt in the long.

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