Too Many Bureaucrats and They Are Paid Too Much - Part II

In response to Too Many Bureaucrats and They Are Paid Too Much I received an email from reader "Kurt" saying "Please get a grip". Kurt thinks the size of government is not a problem.

Here is the video Kurt was responding to. The video is from Daniel J. Mitchell, Ph.D. Senior Fellow, The Cato Institute. I am a big fan of the Cato Institute. They stand for Individual Liberty, Free Markets, and Peace. Those are three admirable goals.



Proving that some people can neither read nor think, Kurt sent a graph from Calculated Risk regarding Government Employment Since 1976.



Interestingly, the Cato video posted a similar chart then went on to dispute it three ways, first by salary, second by mentioning quasi-government employees, and third by pointing out figures do not include military employees, postal workers, subsidy recipients, or contract jobs.

Here is a chart from the video.



Those numbers are from 2005. Care to guess where those numbers are now?

Here is another way of looking at things

Manufacturing and Construction vs. Government Employment



Quasi-Public Jobs

Bear in mind the government employment numbers do not include "Quasi-Public" jobs.

Please consider Current Decade of Job Losses vs. Great Depression; How Did Quasi-Public Jobs Fare? Who is Whining?

Public and Quasi-Public Jobs vs. Everything Else



Please see Mandel's article for a state-by-state breakdown.

Who is Doing all the Whining?

Who is doing all the whining and all the pissing and moaning? The answer of course is those who fared the best in the last decade: the police and fire unions, the teachers' unions, transit unions, and public unions in general.

Many in private sector fields have been hammered silly with rapidly rising healthcare costs and lower paychecks (assuming they have a job at all). Meanwhile those with the most benefits and those who have suffered the least are the ones unjustifiably bitching to high heavens about how unfairly they are being treated.

The above chart is from A Decade of Labor Market Pain by Mike Mandel.

March 2000 vs. March 2011

Let's look at this one final way. Let's compare Establishment Data from March 2000 to Establishment Data March 2011.

Government workers in 2000: 20.944 million
Government workers in 2011: 22.547 million

Private workers in 2000: 109.080 million
Private workers in 2011: 107.360 million

In the last 11 years government employment rose by 1.603 million
In the last 11 years government employment rose by 7.65%

In the last 11 years private employment fell by 1.72 million
In the last 11 years private employment fell by 1.58%

Once again, recall that government jobs exclude military, post office, and contract work.

Amusingly the person who wrote me said I need to "get a grip". No Kurt, you need to listen to what the video said, then think.

Anyone who thinks government bureaucracy is not massive is simply not thinking. The same applies to anyone who thinks government workers are not overpaid.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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