In advance of Friday’s July jobs report, NPR’s consistently excellent Planet Money blog charted the difference in total jobs gained and lost since 2007 in the private and government sectors. The difference is stunning.
Government jobs, after weathering the start of the recession, have steadily declined since 2010. And since then, the private sector has added jobs month after month, albeit at a much slower pace than needed to lower the unemployment rate in any meaningful way.
“Whatever happens with government jobs, when you look at the big picture, it’s clear that the story of jobs in America is mainly a private-sector story,” write Jacob Goldstein and Lam Vo (emphasis ours).
The private sector is so much bigger than the public sector, and the job cuts during the recession were so massive, and the recovery has been so slow. The jobs picture won’t get much better, and the economy won’t really get back to normal, until the private sector adds millions more jobs. That may take years.
Read the whole thing here.
