Private Sector Jobs Vanish into Thin Air While Feds Add Even More Workers to Payroll

Empty Office

The private sector hemorrhaged jobs in October while the federal government expanded its workforce to even bigger levels, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released Friday.

The U.S. economy lost 28,000 private sector jobs while the federal government added 40,000, BLS data shows. The private sector job losses come amid a disappointing jobs report overall, with the country adding just 12,000 nonfarm payroll jobs — well below the 110,o00 economists expected.

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Generous Benefit Plans Leading Government Employees to Be Nearly 40 Percent More Expensive than Private Sector

Office Work

State and local government workers were roughly 40% more expensive to employ than private sector employees in the second quarter of 2024, largely due to generous benefit plans, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released Tuesday.

Total compensation costs, including wages, salaries and benefits, averaged $43.94 per hour for private sector employees, approximately 40% less than the $61.37 average hourly compensation cost for state and local government workers, according to the BLS data. The disparity was primarily driven by pricey government benefit plans, with costs averaging $13.04 per hour for private industry workers, over 80% less than the $23.57 per hour in benefit costs for their state and local government counterparts.

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Union Power Slips as Percentage of Union Jobs Declines

Union Rally

The percentage of hourly and salaried workers in a union decreased in 2023, continuing a trend of ongoing decline in the past few decades.

The decline in 2023 was small, from 10.1% of the workforce to 10% even, but the trend is significant. In 1983, about 20% of hourly and salaried workers were in a union, meaning U.S. union membership has halved in about four decades.

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