Employment has been increasing but the mix may not be optimal for our economy.
Bubble charts can be revealing. In this case it reveals one aspect of the way government policy has constrained economic growth.
The data used by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) is readily available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (photo of their office shown above), but I really think their graphical presentation is very helpful in understanding a lot of issues facing the U.S. economy.
Click on graphic for larger image.
As you can see, there are only a handful of sectors where employment has declined over the past four years. But they are all high-wage jobs mostly in government. Personally I have mixed emotions about government staffing as in some cases government is helpful or even essential and in other cases it is the great enslaver of the general populace. But aside from the philosophical issue of how much government is ideal, one wonders why Federal Government employees are worth more than twice as much as a nursing home worker and state and local government employees are worth twice as much as someone working in retail trade. Generally speaking a person working in retail trade is trying hard to please you while the state or local government employee is trying hard to ruin your day. All I want for Christmas is more police to pull me over – NOT.
Do the laws of supply and demand apply in the government sector especially the Federal Government? Pharoah may have had the same problem with too many overseers and not enough brick makers. The overworked brick makers of course decided to emigrate some place with fewer overseers. Efforts to impose an exit tax failed due to unusual winds or divine intervention depending on your perspective. I assume that pyramid construction tailed off.
Re the minimum wage, this chart illustrates the problem. The two largest circles on the chart where there was employment growth are low-pay sectors: retail trade and food services which pays even less than retail. Of course they are drawn as large circles because they are very aggregated. If they were subdivided, they would be shown as a number of smaller circles. So those two sectors may not have grown disproportionately to overall employment – beware of those who create graphics.
