[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.

“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.” The Port St. Lucie area had the highest growth in all government jobs statewide, at 5.4%, as well as in local-government jobs, at 5.2% But the area also shows how local governments could be simultaneously adding jobs and experiencing layoffs. St. Lucie, one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States between 2000 and 2007, opened six schools in the past three years to deal with its expanding student population. Florida’s class-size amendment, passed by voters in 2002, limits the number of students to 18 in pre-K through third-grade classes; 22 in fourth to eighth grade; and 25 in high school.

Over the past year, Florida’s private sector cut 129,500 jobs. The state’s public sector added 9,800 jobs:

Florida Government Employment Government Jobs
Branch	Sept. 2007	Sept. 2008	Jobs Change (statewide)
Local	796,300	804,300	+1.0%
State	216,900	215,300	-0.07
Federal	127,400	130,800	+2.7
Total Govt.	1,140,600	1,150,400	+0.86
Source: Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation

Even as the St. Lucie School District added staff to fill schools, county government trimmed 250 jobs over the past year in areas from libraries to veterans services to environmental-resources protection. The county, which had more than 1,000 positions, is now down to 720 workers — the same number it employed in 2001, even though the county’s population has grown by 40% in that time.

“We’ve frozen; we’ve eliminated; we’ve shifted staff around; and we haven’t been able to provide salary increases, which is abysmal in this economy,” says County Commission Chairman Joe Smith. “We have a 20% smaller workforce with the same or larger demands on government services, and like every other Floridian, we’re trying to find ways to tighten the belt even more.”

Tourism, agriculture and home building may be the big revenue generators for Florida’s economy, but they don’t provide the most jobs. Florida’s top three employment sectors:

Top Employment Sectors in Florida Top Sectors
Sector	Jobs
Trade/ transportation/ utilities	1,564,200
Professional/business	1,275,200
Government	1,150,400
Source: Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation (data not seasonally adjusted)

Boyd at the Rockefeller Institute says education is the single-largest component of state and local government, so growth in K-12 schools often drives public-sector growth in recession. Moreover, demand for the sorts of services government provides, from healthcare to social services, does not decline during recession. In fact, it often increases.

In addition to education, Rust says, hospitals, courts, correctional facilities and law-enforcement agencies are among the government areas still adding jobs in Florida. But she doesn’t necessarily expect the growth to hold. State and local revenues have declined with Florida’s housing market. Florida economists don’t expect a rebound until the 2010-11 fiscal year. Florida lawmakers had to shrink this year’s budget by $4 billion and now face another $4 billion hole next year. The first step in trimming is often to eliminate all vacant positions and cut work hours, Rust says — actions already taken across the state that don’t result in a statistical loss.

The next step: Layoffs — or maybe not. Consider these two cases:

• Pinellas Sheriff Jim Coats, who warned taxpayers last spring that the streets would be “littered with human carnage” if he had to cut his budget by 10%, made the cut and eliminated 161 positions, 25 of those deputies. But Hillsborough Sheriff David Gee had a deputy shortage, so he snapped up every laid-off Pinellas cop who wanted to come. “I don’t think they had to miss a day’s pay,” says Coats. Meanwhile, there are few signs of human carnage on Pinellas streets, although Coats says the non-violent crime rate is up slightly in the areas covered by his agency.
• In Gainesville, which had the third-highest government-sector growth in the state, at 2.7%, officials with University of Florida-affiliated Shands HealthCare recently announced plans to shutter an entire hospital. Shands AGH, Gainesville’s longtime community hospital, employs 1,150. Shands HealthCare CEO Tim Goldfarb says he must cut a total $65 million from the system’s budget in the next three years to offset anticipated shortfalls in federal and state funding and insurance reimbursement. Shands will close 80-year-old AGH next fall, about the time it opens a $385-million cancer hospital on campus expected to create 1,200 jobs. In fact, Goldfarb says, “We believe we can find a job for everybody” who loses one in the AGH closure.

Indeed, across the nation, says Boyd, government is good at finding ways to grow — even during hard times. “The numbers are dramatic and persistent over time,” Boyd says, “in recession after recession after recession.”

Big Local Growers The top five Florida metro areas for local-government job growth:
Local Government	Growth (Sept. 07-Sept. 08)
Port St. Lucie	5.2%
Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent	3.5
Panama City/Lynn Haven	3.0
Bradenton-Sarasota	2.5
Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach-Deerfield	2.2