Government Jobs Now Outnumber Manufacturing Jobs by a Wide Margin

According to data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, government jobs now outnumber manufacturing jobs by nearly 1.8 to 1. Almost 22,000,000 people work for local, state, and federal agencies, compared to 12,329,000 workers in the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing employment hasn’t been this low since before World War Two, and since 1989 when these two numbers were equal, our government has gained 4 million employees while manufacturing has lost 5.5 million.

In 1941, nearly one of ten Americans worked in the manufacturing sector compared to 1 and 26 today. In that same time period, the ratio of government workers has grown from 1 in 27.7 to 1 in 14.6 today. However, if you took a closer look at the recent growth of government jobs, you might be fooled into thinking that our government is actually diminishing.

While the number of government jobs has grown consistently for decades, it hasn’t kept up with population growth in recent years. Since the 1980’s the percentage of the population that is employed by the government at all levels, had actually fallen slightly to 6.9% by 2012. This decline however, has coincided with a substantial increase in government debt. Within the next ten years, the government’s deficit is set to explode to astronomical levels, as is government revenue. In other words, our government is growing slowly, but on a per capita basis they’re leaching off the private sector now more than ever.