March 28, 2024

Government Hiring

Government Keeps Hiring

Finding ways to grow: Government keeps hiring as the private sector in Florida trimmed more than 100,000 jobs in a year.

Cynthia Barnett | 12/1/2008
City Hall jobs
[Illustration: Judi Guitteau]
Across Florida over the past year, painful cuts in government services have become increasingly common. Some disabled adults have lost access to transportation. Foster kids wait longer for adoption services. Fewer troopers patrol the highways. Music and art instruction have been axed in some public schools. University presidents complain of a “brain drain” of many talented professors.

But you wouldn’t know any of that from looking at the public payroll. Amid the severe economic decline, government — the third-largest employment sector in Florida — has added nearly 10,000 jobs in the state over the past year.

Donald Boyd
“In a recession, what you invariably see are significant declines in private-sector employment, and in the public sector,
with rare exceptions, no downturn in employment
but rather a slowdown in
the rate of growth.”

— Donald J. Boyd, senior fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York
That growth occurred as Florida’s private-sector employers dealing with the start of recession shed 129,500 jobs in the same period — September 2007 to September 2008. Overall, while Florida’s private employment decreased 1.9% over that period, government jobs increased about 1%.

The pattern is the same at the national level and is typical of almost every modern recession, says Donald J. Boyd, senior fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York. “In a recession, what you invariably see are significant declines in private-sector employment, and in the public sector, with rare exceptions, no downturn in employment but rather a slowdown in the rate of growth.”

Most new jobs in Florida came from local government, followed by federal government, which is the largest employer in the nation. State government was the only part of the public sector that saw a net loss.

In interviews, local government officials across the state expressed disbelief at the numbers, citing layoffs in the hundreds, from sheriff’s deputies to building inspectors. Rebecca Rust, director of labor market information at Florida’s Agency for Workforce Innovation, says it’s true there’s been a dramatic dip in local-government employment — but it’s a decline in growth, not a net decline. “It’s a very mixed bag,” Rust says. “Some local governments do have a significant decline, but others had increases.”

Tags: Politics & Law, Government/Politics & Law

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