Every five years the U.S. Census Bureau conducts a census of government employment and finances in the United States. The finance data for 2007 is due out next summer; the employment data was released (thus far on their “ftp” site only) last week. It will take a great deal of work data for me to reorganize the data for states and counties (including data for all local governments within a county) into usable form, as I did for 2002. To put the election for President into perspective, however, I have whipped up a summary of federal, state and local government employment at the national level (attached). The data show that the federal government accounted for just 12.3% of the 22 million U.S. government employees in 2007. A few exclusively federal categories, national defense and international relations, the post office and the space program, accounted for more than half of all federal workers. Excluding as well other functions that are primarily divided between federal and state governments, such as social insurance administration (mostly Social Security at the federal level, unemployment insurance at the state level) and natural resources, the federal government accounted for just 2.6% of government employment. These categories, and (more importantly) state universities and prisons, account for most state government jobs.
Looking at the vast majority of government functions, local governments account for 85% of total government employment. Federal governments collect and distribute money, but local governments do the work. The next President will only directly administer, for the most part, national defense, the post office, and collection and distribution of money via Social Security and the IRS. He will influence much else, but only in association with the Congress and state governments, which control the flow of funds to other organizations. Obama vs. McCain is just one piece of the decision. Aside from foreign and military issues, control of Congress and the State Senate are as important or more important.
The scope of what the next President will influence, of course, goes far beyond federal, state and local governments. Local governments employed 14.2 million workers in March 2007 according to the Census Bureau; according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics private employers in the Health Care and Social Assistance sector employed 15 million workers at that time. Directly (through spending) or indirectly (through tax breaks and the purchase of private health insurance for their employees) federal, state and local governments pay for the majority of third party health care spending, with the federal government providing the lion’s share of the money. Social assistance organizations are primarily government funded as well. Other industries where private companies rely primarily on government contacts include infrastructure construction (which employed 922,000 in March 2007), and aerospace and shipbuilding (637,000), which is supported in large part by the military. (One could argue that a large share of the agriculture and finance industries are now wards of the federal government as well).
Looking at public employment alone, however, one function is far more extensive than the rest — education. The 10.9 million workers in higher (2.9 million) and elementary and secondary education (7.9 million), along with state and federal education oversight agencies, accounted for nearly half of all government workers. Nothing else comes close. Other major categories are public hospitals (1.25 million), which can be added to the extensive private health care that is government-funded, and police protection (1.2 million) and corrections (780,000).
Two questions have to be asked: what kind of compulsive nut am I to spend many hours (three so far) to produce data that will have little if any impact, and why am I the one doing it?
I’m doing it because it should have an impact, for one thing. As we head into a fiscal crisis, having some government functions employ far more people in New York State, or in certain parts of New York State, ought to raise questions. Couldn’t public services be provided with fewer employees, as in other locations? Allow me to repeat myself — just because it is the national average doesn’t make it right, but substantial deviations in either direction ought to at least require an explanation and justification.
In reality, of course, in New York the government functions that are the largest overall also employ more people here, relative to the overall population, than in other places, because they have the most money to spend on the state legislature. And no one else is compiling the data, I suppose, because our elected officials, to the extent they are interested in how New York’s government employment, payroll, revenues and expenditures compare with other places, are interested in the public not finding out. Thus, none of the 27,806 people employed in the financial administration function for New York’s state and local governments is likely to produce a county by county compilation, although I have asked the New York State Department of Labor for some assistance on detailed data for related private-sector industries.
Speaking of those financial employees, apparently the Census of Governments is not a true census, because not every government responds to the Census Bureau. The Bureau reports that 12.5% of the governments in New York State did not respond, slightly worse than the national average, although those that did apparently filled out the forms correctly, with New York scoring above average on complete data for each data item. New Jersey scored much worse.
So the data is based in part on estimates. But I will compile it regardless, for those who want to know what is actually going on, even though in New York State politics is about who, not about what. Because, after all, no one is paying me not to.