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August 30, 2012

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State and Local Jobs Shrink

State and Local Jobs Shrink

by Frederick H. Lowe
Jobs in state and local governments declined last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 Annual Survey of Public Employment & Payroll.

In 2011, there were 16.4 million full-time equivalent state and local government employees, down 1.4 percent, compared with approximately 16.6 million in 2010, a Census Bureau spokesperson tells The NorthStar News & Analysis.

The  number of full-time equivalent individuals working for state and local governments dropped with police, jail and prison employees accounting for two of the four major job-creating categories.

The decline in government jobs is considered one of the reasons for the rise in unemployment among African Americans and a key reason why the nation’s overall jobless rate remains persistently high.  

The Census Bureau has a complicated formula to determine a full-time equivalent worker. The number of full-time employees is added to the number of hours worked by part-time employees divided by the standard number of hours for a full-time employees, bureau officials said.

Local governments, which include counties, cities, townships, special districts and school districts, accounted for 12 million full-time equivalent employees in 2011, down 204,781 in full-time equivalent employees from 2010. Arkansas reported the largest increase in local government full-time equivalents, up 13.3 percent, in 2011, compared with 2010. Arizona, however, reported the biggest decline of 7 percent in 2011, compared with 2010.

State governments employed 4.4 million full-time equivalent employees in 2011, down 0.4 percent  from 2010. Half of the 50 state governments reported decreases in full-time equivalent employment from 2010 to 2011.  Louisiana led the way with a 4.9 percent decline. Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oklahoma and New York followed Louisiana.

On the other hand, North Carolina was the leader in adding full-time equivalent employees. The state added 7,955 jobs from 2010 to 2011. Utah, Tennessee, Arizona and North Dakota followed.

State and local governments pin their growth on police officers and people who work in corrections. The majority of employees, or 8.9 million, worked in education, followed by those who worked in hospitals. Some  964,381 were employed by police departments and 923,951, and 717,940 were employed by corrections departments in 2011.

The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C. -based non-partisan policy organization, wrote that the federal government must spend funds to stimulate state and local governments to reduce unemployment in the African-American community.

"Additional federal aid to state and local governments is particularly important to black workers, who have suffered the biggest proportional losses of good public-sector jobs as state and local governments responded to budget shortfalls with layoffs," wrote Algernon Austin, Ph.D, a sociologist who is director of the Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy program at EPI.  "While the Obama Administration has proposed providing more aid to state and local governments, conservatives in Congress in Congress have blocked such efforts."

Economists also argue that the overall unemployment rate remains high because of sharp cuts in state and local government spending in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, which led to large numbers of layoffs. The unemployment rate was 8.3 percent in July, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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