Private employment has dropped nine times faster than state and local government employment in New York since last year, according to a report issued today by the Albany-based Rockefeller Institute. But the national trend showed even more of a disparity between the private and public sectors. The report’s main finding: “Private sector employment for the nation as a whole has fallen by 6.9 million jobs between the December 2007 start of the recession and July 2009. Over the same period, state and local government employment has risen by 110 thousand jobs or 0.6 percent, with increases in both state governments and local governments.”
Thirty states added government jobs while losing private jobs between the April-June quarter of 2008 and the same quarter of this year, the Rockefeller Institute found. New York was one of 16 states in which combined state-local government employment dropped during that period. In New York’s case, private employment dropped 2.7 percent, less than half the national average decrease of 5.9 percent, while state-local government jobs decreased 0.3 percent, compared to a national average increase of 0.6 percent.
The decrease in government employment in New York was concentrated entirely at the state level, where payrolls fell 2 percent. Local government employment in New York increased by 0.1 percent, the report said.
Continued growth in government payriolls after the start opf a recession is “a typical pattern,” the Rockefeller Institute’s Don Boyd noted, but “further employment reductions are almost certainly on the way.”
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