Today’s New York Times has an interesting graphic on private sector employment growth in the U.S.
The overall picture shows that we have about the same number of private sector jobs that we had in 1999 (0.01% annual growth rate over 10 years). If there are more Americans working they are working for the government. (Population growth rate of 1 percent per year combined with current government spending of about 37 percent of GDP means that the government will have to expand about 3 percent every year in order to provide jobs for new Americans, unless somehow a way can be found to encourage private enterprise (see my economic recovery plan for a personal theory).)
The decline in manufacturing is an old story, though the 3.7 percent annual rate is an alarmingly fast grind-down. The declines in air transportation, hotels, and retail are surprising. It certainly does not feel as though we have fewer airline flights, hotels, or stores.
We have more airline flights, hotels and stores. Inflation adjusted per capita GDP grew by over 15% over the period 1999 – 2008. Manufacturing productivity has exploded. Even with the decline in manufacturing employment, U.S. manufacturing output increased by over 8% over the same time period. (source: CIA World Fact Book adjusted with the BLS Inflation Calculator).
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
Gah… Why do they make the graph so freaking complicated (a comparison of some time t, and t – 10 years)? Why can’t it just be a measure of absolute private jobs? Or a comparison of percent privately employed to total labor supply? Or a comparison of privately employed, publicly employed, and total population?
The table, however, is quite useful. It would be even more useful if they included the change in population and/or labor supply to get a feel for the numbers.
People in the U.S. are slowly realizing what is occurring in their economy and more mainstream media reports such as this will help them understand what has been going on for the last 100 years. The U.S. is now a government-based economy and the transition began in the early 20th century. Over-regulation, over-taxation, and unions are not conducive to private sector growth. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your beliefs), growth in federal, state, and local government employment has helped mask the disintegrating private sector.