COP: 1 Government Worker to Every 5 American Working Adults

Daniel Greenfield

Unemployment Rate = 7.6%, Unemployment Rate for Government Workers = 3.6%

Why don’t we just give everyone a guaranteed government job? It worked in the Soviet Union where there was no unemployment and not much of anything else. Also people who didn’t have jobs were deported to labor camps. Or shot.

But until that wonderful Socialist utopia dawns, we can still be reassured that we live in a nation where government employees remain a privileged class, their noble public service rewarded by better benefits and low unemployment rates.

The unemployment rate for civilian government workers dropped to 3.6 percent in March from 3.8 percent in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Since July, times have been very good for government in the United States, with governments managing to add 618,000 workers to their payrolls.  In March, there were 20,633,000 total government workers in the U.S.  In July the government employed 20,015,000 people.

Why not shoot for 30 million? That way there can be 1 government worker to every 10 Americans. But actually going by an adult population of around 200 million in the 18-65 range, we’ve already passed 1 government worker to every 10 Americans
If you rank that against the number of American adults with full time jobs, you find that it’s more like 1 government worker to 5 employed adults.
There’s an obvious problem with that considering that government workers tend to be paid more than the private sector and having 5 workers subsidize 1 government employee is shaky, especially once unfunded pensions kick in.