Friday, April 27, 2012

The US' Austerity in Charts -- Or, "Where is the Government Takeover Again?"

This chart is from Krugman:



This is actually pretty important - and it's a point we've made a few times.  A big reason for the high unemployment rate is the cut in government jobs, especially at the state and local level.  As Krugman notes:


If public employment had grown the way it did under Bush, we’d have 1.3 million more government workers, and probably an unemployment rate of 7 percent or less.