How Much Has Government Grown?

The chart above shows the monthly employment levels since 1969 in: a) the construction and manufacturing sectors combined, and b) government. Back in 1969, there were almost 2 manufacturing and construction jobs for every government employee. Since then, government employment almost doubled from 12 million in 1969 to almost 24 million today, as manufacturing and construction jobs have remained flat and have recently fallen, to the point that there are now more workers employed by government than are employed in the manufacturing and construction sectors. A version of this graph was posted here and here (thanks to Tim Wise).

But before getting too depressed about that trend, I decided to check something else: Government employees as a percent of total nonfarm employment, and the interesting results are presented here:

As the chart shows, there has been a general downward trend in government employees as a percent of total payrolls since the mid-1970s, from more than 19% in 1975 to below 16% by 1998, with a slight reversal of the trend since 2000.

As much as we hear about the growth in government, it seems like the jobs data tell a different story. Comment welcome.

One explanation for the top chart is that there have been so many productivity gains in manufacturing that we can produce increasingly higher levels of output over time with fewer and fewer manufacturing workers?

Comments

[Steven Hansen]

Mark, your employment data appears correct - but the problem is cost of government as a percent of gdp - not an employment count.

if you produced a third graph of cost of government divided by number of employees against total GDP (less government) divided by total non-government employment - the problem would be painfully obvious.

2009 Jan 22 03:03 AM

[strutzma]

Mark,
Is there any way you could create the same chart you have below (govt employees as a percent of total) for the manufacturing and construction data for these same dates? I'd be interested to see what we can see from those data....

2009 Jan 22 08:07 AM

[User 143167]

It needs more staffs to run a socialistic government, so what to surprise?

2009 Jan 22 08:50 AM

[Paul Killinger]

One major problem with government is that it resists innovation. While private enterprise must innovate and become increasingly more productive simply to survive, government does not.

2009 Jan 22 09:56 AM

[OldNavySailor]

The size of the federal government is overwhelming to me, so I'd like to focus on my state of New York:

Population of New York State: 19,490,297.
(see: www.census.gov/popest/...).

Number of full time public employees: 1,122,950.
(see: ftp2.census.gov/govs/a...).

State population ranking:

1. California – 36.8 million,
Total public employees – 1.6 million (ftp2.census.gov/govs/a...)

2. Texas – 24.4 million
Total public employees – 1.3 million (ftp2.census.gov/govs/a...)

3. NYS – 19.5 million
Total public employees – 1.2 million (ftp2.census.gov/govs/a...)

NYS ranks first in the nation as to the ratio of full time public employees to citizens (1 public employee for every 17 citizens). This figure does not include 268,749 part-time public employees!

This reality places a crushing economic burden on the private sector. New York must reduce spending and not increase taxes. In these hard economic times to consider increasing taxes will contract the economy further by discouraging new economic development as well as drive existing tax payers to lower income tax or no income tax States.

When the private sector economy shrinks in productivity and wealth, the public sector must do the same, otherwise the country is out of balance.

2009 Jan 22 11:49 AM

[carey_jim]

More interesting than your charts is the commenters' unwillingness to accept them as true.

I suppose these people would also deny that the U.S. Government created the Internet as part of the national defense plan or that most of the discoveries in biotechnology have come from state owned Universities, just to cite two of many examples.

They would call it left-wing propaganda, no doubt. Everyone knows that government can't innovate and all creativity comes from private enterprise monopolies like Microsoft and Apple.

Apple is reported to have created the revolutionary operating system called Tiger but some people think Big Brother, the government did it.

New Think rules.

2009 Jan 22 01:41 PM

[henarl]

The reason for the second chart's results: A large increase in the number of non producing white collar office jobs in the private sector. For every job that was lost to outsourcing and increased productivity in manufacturing, a white collar job was added in administration and the service economy. That is presently correcting during this recession as those white collar jobs are the ones currently disappearing.

2009 Jan 22 02:09 PM

[carey_jim]

Here is a list of the top 25 graduate business schools rated in 2005.

Count the number of private universities and compare them to the number of state run universities. And remember, we are talking about business education and not science education, where the results are even more heavily tilted towards state run universities.

A good percentage of people working for the government work in public education and most people think public education does a better job, and certainly more equitable job, of educating people than private education.


1 Northwestern University (Kellogg School Executive MBA Program)
2 University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)
3 University of Chicago (Executive MBA Program North America)
4 University of Michigan
5 UNC Chapel-Hill (Kenan-Flagler) (MBA for Executives Weekend Program)
6 Emory University (Weekend Executive MBA Program)
7 IMD
8 USC (Marshall)
9. Duke University (Global EMBA Program)
10 Georgetown University (International Executive MBA)
11 Duke University (Weekend EMBA)
12 Texas-Austin (Texas Executive MBA (Option II))
13 Ohio State University (Executive MBA)
14 UCLA (Anderson)
15 IESE Business School (Global Executive MBA)
16 Southern Methodist University
17 Cornell University (Cornell Executive MBA Program)
18 Purdue University (EMB Program)
19 New York University (NYU Stern Executive MBA Program)
20 Notre Dame (South Bend EMBA)
21 Queens University (Queen's National Executive MBA)
22 Western Ontario (Ivey) (EMBA -- Canada)
23 Pepperdine University (EMBA)
24 Vanderbilt (Owen)
25 London Business School (Executive MBA)

2009 Jan 22 02:15 PM

[carey_jim]

The split is about fifty-fifty between public and private business graduate schools. (I forgot that the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania and some others that sound like state universities are private.

The point I'm trying to make is that public education stands up very well to private education and it is not possible to say that one trumps the other, and therefore that government is always less efficient that private industry, at least in education.


On Jan 22 02:15 PM carey_jim wrote:

> Here is a list of the top 25 graduate business schools rated in 2005.
>
>
> Count the number of private universities and compare them to the
> number of state run universities. And remember, we are talking about
> business education and not science education, where the results are
> even more heavily tilted towards state run universities.
>
> A good percentage of people working for the government work in public
> education and most people think public education does a better job,
> and certainly more equitable job, of educating people than private
> education.
>
>
> 1 Northwestern University (Kellogg School Executive MBA Program)
>
> 2 University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)
> 3 University of Chicago (Executive MBA Program North America)<br/>4
> University of Michigan
> 5 UNC Chapel-Hill (Kenan-Flagler) (MBA for Executives Weekend Program)
>
> 6 Emory University (Weekend Executive MBA Program)
> 7 IMD
> 8 USC (Marshall)
> 9. Duke University (Global EMBA Program)
> 10 Georgetown University (International Executive MBA)
> 11 Duke University (Weekend EMBA)
> 12 Texas-Austin (Texas Executive MBA (Option II))
> 13 Ohio State University (Executive MBA)
> 14 UCLA (Anderson)
> 15 IESE Business School (Global Executive MBA)
> 16 Southern Methodist University
> 17 Cornell University (Cornell Executive MBA Program)
> 18 Purdue University (EMB Program)
> 19 New York University (NYU Stern Executive MBA Program)
> 20 Notre Dame (South Bend EMBA)
> 21 Queens University (Queen's National Executive MBA)
> 22 Western Ontario (Ivey) (EMBA -- Canada)
> 23 Pepperdine University (seekingalpha.com/symbo...)
>
> 24 Vanderbilt (Owen)
> 25 London Business School (Executive MBA)
>

2009 Jan 22 02:41 PM

[bs_o_meter]

Carey_Jim, the problem with this particular author is that he consistently spins data to support positions. The government now subcontracts its labor out. If you divide the total cost of government by the employee count you will see the illusion clearly.

2009 Jan 24 02:48 AM

[Mysticseal]

Ahh, bsometer, you hit the nail on the head. Even the government knows the private industry is less expensive that government. Even though the number of government employees has decreased spending has steadily increased particularly in the past twenty years. Cary, jim is obvioulsly one of those sheep created by liberal education has learned to use the statistics that serve his point of view rather than allowing the facts to determine his stance on any issue. I have seen so many kids come into college in the past 30 years who cannot read at the college level, and I am in a Master

2009 Oct 25 08:15 PM