The Unkindest Kind Of Cuts

It's funny when one of the few remaining actual economists at the WSJ decides to write something factual that bucks the "owned by News Corp" trend, like a sotto voce mumble you can just make out in all the noise of "Obama causes socialism!" and stuff.

7.1%: What the unemployment rate would be without government job cuts.

While most industries have added jobs over the past three years, the recovery has largely bypassed the government sector.

Federal, state and local governments have shed nearly 750,000 jobs since June 2009, according to the Labor Department‘s establishment survey of employers. No other sector comes close to those job losses over the same period. Construction is in second worst place, but its 225,000 cuts are less than a third of the government reductions. To be sure, construction and other sectors performed worse during the depths of the recession, but no area has had a worse recovery.

A separate tally of job losses looks even worse. According to the household survey, which is where the unemployment rate comes from, there are nearly 950,000 fewer people employed by the government than there were when the recovery started in mid-2009. If none of those people were counted as unemployed, the jobless rate would be 7.1%, compared with the 7.7% rate reported on Friday.

Of course, we were told those cuts were absolutely necessary, and that they would be replaced by higher paying private sector jobs.  It's been almost four years.  Where are the magic private jobs?  Well, most of them are at McDonald's I guess.

Here's the stinger at the end, which I assume had to be written for the mouth breathing FOXoids.

Whether you view reducing the size of the public sector as a positive or negative, it clearly means fewer jobs and a higher unemployment rate in the near term.

Which is pretty much what everybody else said, but of course you have to spell it out for them.   Austerity doesn't work, folks.