Under the Dome notes that a new report by the Pew Charitable Trust’s Center for the States says that North Carolina was one of the top cutters in state and local government jobs over the past three years. Using Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics measurements, the ranks of government employees in North Carolina fell from 639,100 in July 2008 to 616,400 in August 2011.
Guess who was in charge of state budgeting the lion’s share of that time? Democrats. The budget passed by legislative Republicans did not take effect until July 1 of this year.
Next Friday, when the state Employment Security Commission releases its jobs report for September, we’ll have a solid idea of how local schools and state higher ed institutions fared as the first school year under a Republican budget went into full swing. While Gov. Bev Perdue warned that some 30,000 layoffs may result from the current GOP budget, it’ll be fascinating to see if she’s right … or if the governor and her fellow Democrats decimated the ranks of public employment even more.
BONUS OBSERVATION: Using August as the benchmark date is interesting, since K-12 schools and colleges are out of session in August, which should depress job levels. September should be a better measuring stick.
BONUS OBSERVATION 2: After a second look, it’s important to point out that the Pew Center used seasonally adjusted numbers from BLS. The seasonal adjustment is an estimate intended to smooth out any variations in seasonal hiring (such as the traditional summer school break, when teacher jobs would not be counted). When the September ESC report comes out, the best yardstick of employment would be to compare the unadjusted numbers from September 2008 to September 2011, for three reasons: First, the budget for the fiscal year will have taken full effect. Second, the school year will be completely under way. And third, the seasonal adjustment factors (which are estimates rather than actual counts of jobs) can be ignored.
