The good news: The private sector gained 64,000 jobs in September. The bad news? The public sector lost 159,000. And they weren’t all census jobs, either. Local governments fired 76,000 workers. In other words, this is the first jobs report in recent months that isn’t driven by census layoffs. If there were no census jobs at all, the report would still be negative.
64,000 is good news?
Economist estimate it takes around 110,000 jobs a month just to deal with new entrants to the labor force. A recent San Francisco Fed paper estimated that to achieve the Congressional Budget Office’s expectation of an 8% unemployment rate by the end of 2012, the economy would need to add an average of 227,000 a month. And it’s worth remembering that by modern standards 8% unemployment is a terrible outcome.
Ezra continues
The government is now impeding an economic recovery. But it’s not for the reasons you often hear. It’s not because of debt or because of taxes. Nor has it scared the private sector into timidity. It’s because, at the state and local level, it’s firing people.
And why is that, Ezra? Could it be because the Democrat led government has worked hard to do all the wrong things, like creating massive debt, uncertainty regarding taxation, not too mention the Stimulus, ObamaCare, attempts at Cap and Tax…you know the deal out there in Reality Land. State and local governments are not seeing revenue because people are not working, as well as reducing their spending. So, maybe it is because of ….. debt and taxes.
And his idea to fix this?
It doesn’t need to be like this. The government can’t make the private sector invest. They can’t demand that Wal-Mart start hiring. They can offer incentives, and tax breaks, and encouragement, but that’s it. The same cannot be said when it comes to public sector jobs. The government can, if it’s willing to run deficits, keep those workers employed. But Senate Republicans, alongside some conservative Democrats, have decided to make the government pro-cyclical: Rather than fighting the downturn in the business cycle, the government is now accelerating it.
So, in Liberal World, if it hasn’t worked well, do it again. The Stimulus, son of Stimulus, etc and so on, provided short term relief to keep those jobs at the expense of massive debt. The private sector is still barely hiring, people are not spending, so there is little money coming in to government at all levels. Doing it again is absurd.
There is not a single example of government stimulus assisting any country in the history of the world. Well, with the exception of increasing defense spending, because that always ends up reducing the deficit. The silly things Democrats want to spend our money on, however, is an insult towards anyone who can understand a Nancy Drew novel. (Funny how Democrats want to cut the Department of Defense’s budget _ it just further convinces me that Democrats are actively seeking to destroy America.)