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What we have here is a clash of worldviews. Sen. Harry Reid, Democrat leader in the US Senate, wants you to know that despite the layoffs and business failures, the dead housing market and the bleak prospects for those of us who aren’t living in gold-plated government jobs with lavish union-approved pension plans, the private sector is just fine.

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Unemployment remains above 9 percent. But the private sector is doing just fine, says Harry Reid.

And he’s not finished there. He also wants you to know that he and his party are done trying to stimulate the private sector, and that they want to now grow the public sector.

Have a look at this Heritage chart, from February 2011.



While the private sector has outpaced the government sector’s job growth over the past few months, the fact is, it’s barely keeping pace with overall population growth and the Democrats came into power with Obama growing government faster than anything else. That’s about the only thing they have done successfully. That’s probably because government jobs are just about the only type of jobs most Democrats understand how to create. Throw money at a bureaucracy, it hires more people, productivity need not matter. The problem is, the private sector has to pay for that through taxes, which can end up squelching private sector job growth.

And that brings us to our clash of worldviews. Reid’s is a government-centered world view. The Republicans have a different approach. They don’t think that the overregulated private sector is “doing just fine,” and want to unshackle it so that it can grow again and create more jobs.

What Harry Reid has done is set himself up to star in GOP ads next year that will fairly depict the Democrats from Obama on down as out of touch with the world outside the beltway. Unless the economy is booming on election day, that ad will resonate.

"...Total compensation for federal workers, including health care and other benefits, last year averaged $126,369, compared with $122,697 in 2009, according to Bloomberg News calculations of Commerce Department data. There were 170,467 federal employees in the District of Columbia as of June..."

travelinman67 wrote:

A measly 18,000 jobs were added in June, carried by an increase of 57,000 jobs in the private sector but dulled by losses of 39,000 jobs in the public sector. As government stimulus winds down and states move to close massive budget gaps, public sector cuts should continue to grow, labor market experts say.

Skjellyfetti wrote:http://money.usnews.com/money/careers/a ... n-recovery

Note private sector adding jobs for the most part in 2010 and 2011 and the public sector shedding jobs for the most part in 2010 and 2011.

...The public sector is expected to remain a drag on overall job growth in the months and even years to come. "We can't afford the amount of government service that we've been consuming," O'Keefe says. Despite all the layoffs over the past few years, the public sector still has 7 percent more workers than it had at the beginning of 2000. The private sector, on the other hand, has about 1 percent fewer jobs...