I think the economy has some big issues going on in manufacturing and construction, however, even given that the private sector recovery just doesn’t look that bad.
These are private sector job gains and losses over the last 10 years.
The difference between this recovery and the last is of course public sector. I don’t have a good chart for that because I don’t know where I can get easy ex-census data. Someone has it because I see a bunch of charts labeled ex-census, but I don’t know where they are getting it from.
One interesting side thing though is to look at State and Local Government employment over time.
Here is the log of State and Local employment going back as far as I have data, 1955.
Noticeable downshift around 1980. Lets check it out in logs.
With logs, straight lines are constant growth. So what we are seeing – a part from the 80s phase shift, is a slowdown that was continuous since around 1990.
Lets do the same, with fraction of the population.
That has a similar break as the stagnation in TFP
Of course that makes sense if you think the TFP slowdown was about education. Most State and Local workers are in education.
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Saturday ~ June 4th, 2011 at 9:38 pm
JW Mason
Of course that makes sense if you think the TFP slowdown was about education. Most State and Local workers are in education.
So the argument is that less education employment –> slower TFP growth? Not disagreeing, necessarily. Just clarifying.
Sunday ~ June 5th, 2011 at 1:39 pm
lark
How does this square with the fact that private sector employment is 2% below where it was 10 years ago?
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/06/2011-private-employment-is-2-below-2001-levels/
Sunday ~ June 5th, 2011 at 7:38 pm
Dorset Naga
I’m not buying your claim that the private sector recovery doesn’t look that bad on your graph. The job gains may resemble those of the previous recovery, but the recent job gains don’t come close to mirroring the recent job losses, which they did in the ’03 – ’04 recovery. It looks like by ’05 the losses had been fully recovered, whereas this time at the rate we are recovering it appears private sector jobs will take many more years to fully recover.