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Economy

Government hiring is behind Biden's job growth

2022-02-11

[Washington Examiner] In addition to the seemingly political motivated annual adjustment to the base seasonal employment numbers.
If you watched President Joe Biden’s remarks on the January jobs report, you could be forgiven for believing that a great feat that "never happened before" had just actually happened. You could be forgiven for believing all his platitudes about working families getting more of what they need, despite inflation not seen since the early 1990s. The problem for Biden and his plummeting approval rating is that his remarks are, at best, a rose-tinted view of reality.

A closer look at the jobs report reveals some concerning data. As the economy continues to recover from the COVID-19 lockdowns, we would expect that smart government policy would foster growth in private sector jobs. Unfortunately, this jobs report shows a reduction in private employment of some 300,000 jobs. Despite this administration’s claims to be laser-focused on "buy American" and repatriating the supply chain, this is a serious blow to the recovery.

In fact, the drop in private employment from December 2021 to January 2022 in this report is the largest decline in private employment during the recovery. This might explain White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s bizarre comment that 9 million workers had called in sick during January and thus there would be fewer people employed. They knew the private employment numbers were going to look bad.

So what explains the increase of 467,000 jobs in January trumpeted by Biden?

A massive, unprecedented increase in government jobs at all levels. Federal, state, and local governments hired nearly 768,000 new employees between December 2021 and January 2022. With the exception of massive government hiring in July and August of 2020 thanks to the CARES Act, there has not been an increase in government employment this large going back to May 2002, when the data became available.

This is not to say that government jobs are not important or that there are not generally good reasons for an increase in government jobs at times. Especially at the state and local levels, government jobs provide vital services to the public. However, the decline in private employment, coupled with high inflation, is indicative of some serious problems with economic fundamentals. Piling on more government jobs will only further burden the struggling recovery.
Added Lord Garth:
as has been discussed before, a lot of housing price increases are baked in for 2022; also petroleum futures signal higher prices on gasoline for the spring and summer so, at least for the next 6 months, things look pretty bad - however, the yield on Treasury instruments is still pretty low, e.g. 10 year T bond is below 2%

Posted by:Hupavish Speaking for Boskone8393

#10 the household survey which generates those big govt employment increases is based on a pretty small sample and subject to a lot of misunderstanding by the people surveyed

I was looking at the employer (aka establishment) survey where the employers themselves report. In that survey, govt employment is pretty stable although the employment of teachers (a pretty large percentage of local govt) has been disrupted by pandemic related issues.

I wouldn't be surprised if the household survey also was messed up by this when, say a person goes from teaching remotely to teaching on site they change their answers about whether they are employed or not. Similarly the various auxiliary functions of education, e.g., kitchen workers, maintenance, health and safety, etc. have been filtering back to on site work over the past year.

Posted by: Lord Garth 2022-02-11 12:56

#9 government sector jobs (non seasonally adjusted) increased by 679,000.

So that's where the illegals are going.

Posted by: Skidmark 2022-02-11 12:18

#8 /\ If the five counties surrounding Washington D.C. can be used as a model, that's roughly 350,000 more democratic voters.

Posted by: Besoeker 2022-02-11 10:35

#7 Also your BLS PDF pg 23 shows 1 month government sector employment increased by 354,000. Hardly a sustainable model.

Posted by: Snusoting Omains7589 2022-02-11 09:41

#6 Re #4: Upon closer examination, this article is comparing the 1 year rise in government employment, with the 1 month drop in private sector employment.

You can see approx those numbers on page 23 of your BLS PDF where 1 year government sector jobs (non seasonally adjusted) increased by 679,000.

The one month private sector jobs shows a several hundred thousand decrease. I leave it to you to add up all the private sector job categories.

Posted by: Snusoting Omains7589 2022-02-11 09:36

#5 By 1920, 5.4 million people worked for the govt.There were twice as many officials as there were workers in Soviet Russia...from Orlando Figes "Revolutionary Russia".

Posted by: Omiting Theting7288 2022-02-11 08:51

#4 I don't understand the Wash Examiner articleshows approx stability in govt jobs.. If you look at table B-1 in the Jan 2022 BLS report,

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

Certainly the BLS has lots of problems in doing seasonal adjustment during the pandemic and this accounts for not only the difference between the Jan 2022 ADP and BLS reports (ADP showing job loss, BLS showing job gains) but also early months where ADP showed large gains and BLS showed small gains.

Also, the Wash Examiner doesn't seem to understand that the BLS report does not measure 'hiring', only people with jobs. Thus people 'recalled' from layoffs (which happens a lot in manufacturing) or switched from temp to permanent (which happens a lot in local govt education employment) are not really 'hiring' in the sense that most people use the term.

Posted by: Lord Garth 2022-02-11 07:54

#3 Prices are sticky. No way that inflationary pressures can be reduced now without either stagflation or a reprise of Paul Volcker's famous "root canal" monetary policy.

Buckle your seatbelts

Posted by: Merrick Ferret 2022-02-11 05:14

#2 You really do have to wonder about a governmental system that permits something like a 'Biden' presidency to happen.

Posted by: Besoeker 2022-02-11 04:36

#1 Not hard to have job growth when you have put a shitload of people out of work and can fudge the numbers. I don't give a shit who is up ext, I can't wait to see this son of a bitch die and I hope it's painful. Take that scraggly ass bitch of a wife with you too.

Posted by: Chris 2022-02-11 01:03

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