Austerity Republicans Keep Cutting Government Jobs

Kevin Drum explains why we're a couple of million jobs short of where we need to be right now, and why Republicans keep complaining that this is a jobless recovery:  Austerity Republicans have cut millions of government jobs, period.

January's job numbers were fairly dismal, but the bad cheer wasn't equally spread. Private sector employment, as usual, increased—by 142,000 jobs last month. At the same time, public sector employment declined. Government employment at all levels was down 29,000 in January. 

Aside from the brief census blip in early 2010, this has been the usual state of affairs for the past four years, ever since the recession officially ended. The chart below shows public and private sector employment indexed to 100 at the end of the recession. Private sector employment is up 6.8 percent. Public sector employment is down 3.4 percent. And that's during a period when population grew 2.3 percent. On a per capita basis, government employment has declined more than 5 percent since 2009, and it's still declining.

All in all we've lost millions of local, state, and federal government jobs thanks to Republicans who have demanded that we cut millions of government jobs.  Now these same Republicans are wondering where the jobs are.

We're doing exactly what the GOP said we should do:  cut millions of government jobs and they would be replaced by "higher paying private sector jobs."  Gosh, that hasn't happened.  I wonder why?