Employment Change by Sector, August-September 2011

Let’s look at employment change in more detail. I charted the big picture yesterday. Here I present change between August and September by sectors of the economy.

The pattern here is much the same as for the last several months. The two categories that show steady increase are professional and business services and education and health services. The second of those is mostly health services—the one sector of this economy that’s marching right along—thanks to the aging Baby Boom generation.

The positive change in the Information sector is due to the end of the Verizon strike. Last month we had a loss there of 48,000 jobs, 45,000 of which the strike caused. The strike ended September 2. That added back the lost 45,000—but the net change in that sector is only 34,000, meaning that even Information lost jobs if we ignore the Verizon strike.

Once more, the big loser is Government, down another 34,000 jobs. Now it is well worth noting that employment in government is the only category of employment our political leadership actually directly controls. And this is the sector that consistently loses the most jobs month to month. Our politicians, therefore, don’t walk the talk. No, sir. To show you how this sector has performed in 2011, I present here another graphic.

This one shows, using an index (December 2010=100), how far employment has slipped in the nine months of 2011 we’ve clocked thus far. Every level of government has shed at least 1 percent of its employment in this period, the Federal and Local more than one. Local government is the largest of these categories. Now in economically troubled times demand for government services grows. We are responding by removing people who provide services at such times. We are not, collectively, behaving rationally.