The economic recovery since the Great Recession of 2007-09 has generally been pretty meager. In fact, President Barack Obama has the dubious distinction of being the only president never to see at least 3 percent year-over-year economic growth since Herbert
The economic recovery since the Great Recession of 2007-09 has generally been pretty meager. In fact, President Barack Obama has the dubious distinction of being the only president never to see at least 3 percent year-over-year economic growth since Herbert Hoover during the early days of the Great Depression in the 1930s. A number of industries have struggled mightily — particularly manufacturing — but one segment that has seen strong growth: government.
The economic recovery since the Great Recession of 2007-09 has generally been pretty meager. In fact, President Barack Obama has the dubious distinction of being the only president never to see at least 3 percent year-over-year economic growth since Herbert Hoover during the early days of the Great Depression in the 1930s. A number of industries have struggled mightily — particularly manufacturing — but one segment that has seen strong growth: government.
The United States lost 9,000 manufacturing jobs in October, while the number of government jobs increased by 19,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. During the past year, manufacturing employment declined by 53,000, while government employment grew by 208,000. This continues a trend that has persisted for nearly four decades. Since manufacturing employment peaked in June 1979, the number of manufacturing jobs has fallen by more than 37 percent, while the number of government jobs has grown by nearly 39 percent.
Now, the 22.2 million government employees — including 14.3 million local government employees, 5.1 million state employees and 2.8 million federal employees — nearly double the 12.3 million manufacturing employees remaining. As CNSNews.com notes, the total number of government employees exceeds the population of every state but California and Texas.
The shrinking of U.S. manufacturing is due, in no small part, to outside factors: technological improvements, a changing economy with a greater emphasis on services, the industrialization of Third World nations such as China and India, which have a lower standard of living, and, thus, lower labor costs.
But much of it also has been self-inflicted, through environmental and labor regulations and union demands that have significantly raised the costs of production and made the industry less competitive on a global scale.
Coal-producing states such as West Virginia have been particularly hard hit by Environmental Protection Agency regulations. “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted,” Obama said in 2008.
He seems to have made good on that threat, as 83,000 coal jobs have been lost and some 400 coal mines shuttered during Obama’s administration.
Hillary Clinton, in her failed campaign, chose to double down on the policy. “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” she crowed at a March campaign stop in Ohio.
Donald Trump took the opposite route, vowing to protect the industry from EPA regulations, and such views certainly resonated with disaffected blue-collar workers across the Rust Belt in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa, likely handing Trump the election.
Voters there did not appreciate the central planning mentality that arrogantly and cavalierly substitutes its own views for that of consumers and dictates which jobs and industries will thrive (such as government, naturally) and which will be killed off. This displacement of productive jobs with an army of government bureaucrats bodes ill for taxpayers and economic growth. Let us hope this trend can be halted, or even reversed, under the Trump administration.
— The Orange County Register
