Boom time for government hiring

It's good to be in government.

As the private sector cuts jobs to gut out rising costs and decreasing sales, public-sector payrolls keep right on growing. USA Today reported Wednesday that federal, state and local governments -- 88,000 separate entities that already employ about 22 million people -- are hiring new employees at their most rapid pace in six years.

"Governments added 76,800 jobs in the first three months of 2008, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports," USA Today reporter Dennis Cauchon writes. "That's the biggest jump in first-quarter hiring since a boom in 2002 that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks. By contrast, private companies collectively shed 286,000 workers in the first three months of 2008." And according to Bloomberg News, employers cut an additional 75,000 jobs in April.

Nevada governments aren't quite in line with the national trend, but the cries of their demise have been greatly exaggerated. Between Jan. 1 and March 31, the number of government workers in Nevada grew by about 300, to 163,100, with most of those hires coming at the local level. Over the past year, Nevada government offices have added about 4,600 jobs, an increase of 2.9 percent.

Compare those numbers to the suffering of industry. Overall employment in Nevada is down about 1 percent this year, losing 14,200 positions since the holidays, according the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation. Construction companies, professional firms and hotel-casinos have suffered significant job losses since last year, leading to 0.3 percent decline in jobs since last March.

"Government jobs are an important cushion for the economy when the private sector falters," North Carolina State University economist Michael Walden told USA Today.

Spoken like a government employee. Government jobs are a "cushion" because they never go away. In government, you simply don't see the kind of significant downsizing or job slashing that private companies undergo to ensure profitability and competitiveness. Once a government job is created and filled, it becomes a "critical" position that's impossible to eliminate.

This "cushion" is an unrelenting drain on the private sector, continuously sucking revenue that would otherwise be poured back into the economy in the form of investment or direct spending.

Even as the country slips toward recession and governments at every level address revenue shortfalls to balance their budgets, the public sector still finds a way to expand myriad bureaucracies by adding to their work force. How can the public sector possibly justify creating more taxpayer-funded jobs when the number of Americans receiving unemployment insurance has hit a four-year high?

"More hiring has nothing to do with good government or economic policy," Rio Grande Foundation Research Director Kenneth Brown told USA Today. "It has everything to do with government being slow to react to economic change."

When government payrolls grow during a stalled economy, it sets up taxpayers for bigger beatings in the years ahead. As all these new workers climb the salary ladder, budgets can't be sustained by existing tax rates. The clamoring for tax increases to keep all these bureaucrats on the payroll ensues.

Nevadans are too familiar with this process. It's playing out all over again.