Tyler Cowen implies no
This BLS graph (look under “And which industries show declining employment over the summer?”) shows a strong seasonal trend which may confound some month-specific citations, but still the number seems to be back to where it had been in earlier years (admittedly the scaling and visuals are not what I would wish for) and more importantly it is hard to spot much effect of the recession at all:
The BLS graph looks strange to me but this is total state and local education employment over the last 10 years, Seasonally Adjusted.
Now state employment is actually up because of Community Colleges mainly, I think. But its not up much. Maybe 40K since the recession ended.
The real action is local where we have lost just under 300K since the recession ended.
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Saturday ~ September 10th, 2011 at 8:08 pm
Joshua Probert
How much is just revenues falling off and local government cutting back and how much is pension funds suddenly having large liabilities and being forced to recapitalize to pay their obligations?
Saturday ~ September 10th, 2011 at 11:32 pm
ezra abrams
why do you get a diff graph from tyler (or more properly, tyler reporting of BLS log graph)
if you look at the table data for the bls graph, it does look like no big loss
http://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2011/schools_out/home.htm#ces_summer_employment_min
what accounts for the difference – also the nelson rock center http://www.rockinst.org/newsroom/data_alerts/2010/08-10-govt_employment.aspx
shows diff results
wtf ?
Sunday ~ September 11th, 2011 at 12:24 am
Structural Adjustment in Teacher Labor Markets « Modeled Behavior
[...] the back and forth between Tyler and Karl on teacher employment, Tyler makes a point I want to quickly address: Note this is a sector where [...]
Sunday ~ September 11th, 2011 at 10:14 am
Martk
Isn’t your assumption that a) things were optimal prior to 2008-2009 and that the decrease is sub-optimal; and b) that the reductions were in the number of teachers only, not in the number of administrators and non-teaching professionals (i.e., consultants, psychologists, etc.)?
In North Carolina alone, real per-pupil expenditures on elementary and secondary education increased 125% between 1980 and 2010. There was no improvement whatsoever in education outcomes. The increases in teachers per pupil, administrators per pupil, and non-teaching professionals per pupil increased 9%, 10%, and 11%, respectively, between 1997 and 2007. Again, there was no improvement whatsoever in education outcomes.
Can’t these corrections be optimal?
Sunday ~ September 11th, 2011 at 10:46 am
GinSlinger
Just so we’re clear, the numbers in your graphs are total employment, not teachers, right? It’s possible to reduce employment in “education” without cuts to the numbers of teachers. The reason I ask, is that the historic data in the graphs do not match those found here: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_004.asp?referrer=report
Now, the post-2009 numbers in my link are projections, so I can only comment on the the past numbers, but they don’t come close to yours if we’re talking about teachers (as your post’s title implies).
I’d also point out that I can’t find teacher (as opposed to total employment) numbers later than 2009, can someone point me to them?
Sunday ~ September 11th, 2011 at 12:05 pm
rjsigmund
a litany of layoffs and other reasons our future is in trouble:
http://marketwatch666.blogspot.com/2011/04/crisis-in-us-public-education.html
Monday ~ September 12th, 2011 at 10:23 am
Daniel Meges
Just a thought… but these graphs shouldn’t normalize for demand… what if the number of students is also dropping (or increasing)… I suppose that may not be the case… but it should be considered.
Thursday ~ December 29th, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Suzy Miss A
It’s just sad to see the teachers are gone but I’ll take some great pictures with them for the memories since I just buy myself a new Canon D10 camera. . Read what others are saying about the Canon D10.