Comments on: Today’s dishonest Fox News graphic

By: TB

TB — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 18:21:04 +0000

Just making sure all the information is out there.

By: BuckGalaxy

BuckGalaxy — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 05:08:47 +0000

The loss of over 600k state government workers really doesn’t take into account the “massive” increase of 50k Federal government workers! Thanks for that, Tom!

By: TB

TB — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 02:45:01 +0000

For completeness, here's the total government worker chart that Buck is talking about when he says government employment has fallen. Here you see that state plus federal employment has indeed fallen. The states, who can't print money, are in a rough spot.

By: TB

TB — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 02:27:18 +0000

I think everyone knows what is meant by an unemployment rate for a particular class of workers.

No different than rates for service workers, manufacturing workers, and other categories. Be careful with your own statistics. "Government employment" is down only if you include state workers. The big spike is census workers. You get a spike like that every ten years. (Edit: replaced graph with a locally-loaded one. Don't trust FRED link to last. Also stretched out the bottom scale.)

By: BuckGalaxy

BuckGalaxy — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 01:33:19 +0000

…they could be talking about the same time frame?? And overall government employment is DOWN under Obama, thus the 5.1%??? But then Fox was trying to frame it in a way that makes it look like government workers are doing better than private sector workers.

By: RobVG

RobVG — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 23:23:23 +0000

Yep. Hope more people call ‘em on that. n/t

By: ER

ER — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 22:27:14 +0000

Maybe it means those gov employees that have been fired by the states and by the Federal government, or that have been “attrited” by gov agencies (failure to replace normal death, promotion, retirement and other losses).

By: alcaray

alcaray — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 22:08:43 +0000

So the criteria is “once having held a government position”?

By: ER

ER — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 20:48:09 +0000

I used to work for municipal government, and I was paid by tax dollars.

But when I learned my salary and benefits were going to be cut, and when my job itself was threatened, I decided to retire early.

Now I draw a pension and Social security, still paid for by tax dollars, but I don’t have to work at all.

That’s called, “cutting out the fat”.

By: alcaray

alcaray — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 20:33:34 +0000

If you are unemployed, how can you be called a government worker?