Taxpayers Funded 73% of All New Jobs Created in the Past 5 Months
Friday’s job reports seemed to bring good news. All the headlines reported, “unemployment rates at lowest level since 2008.” While that’s certainly not false, it’s also not the entire story.
The Associated Press reported, “The rate declined mainly because more people stopped looking for work and weren’t counted as unemployed.” This has been the perpetual untold story of the “recovery;” countless Americans who give up looking for work. Meanwhile, the White House either brags about constantly revised employment numbers or blames President Bush for “unexpectedly” dismal numbers.
Perhaps the most concerning statistic in the latest job report is the number of public sector jobs created. CNS News looked at another angle and found that 73% of all jobs created in the past five months were not private sector jobs, but government jobs. An alarming statistic by any measure.
A Cato Institute study found that public sector employees in 2008 made on average, $67,812 per annum while the average salary in the private sector was $59,909. Not only are private sector employees forced to pay for pubic sector salaries, but they’re paying for jobs that typically earn more while working less and contribute little, if anything to the free market.
Of course, ridiculous waste of tax payer money in the pursuit of jobs is par for the course for this administration. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (dubbed the Stimulus Bill), spent almost $900 billion and resulted in anywhere from 200,000 to 1.5 million jobs, at least according to the CBO. And the cost of those jobs? Anywhere between $4.1 million and $540,000 per job.
While it’s great that individuals occuping these new public sector jobs are employed and feeding the tax coffers, they’re not paying enough in taxes to pay for their jobs. Taxpayers are forced to foot the bill for more unecessary government expansion at a time when the America can barely afford to pay its bills. Government has not produced one job that didn’t cost the taxpayer, and this administration’s policies make that all too apparent.
