Graphic Summary: 2017 Census of Governments, Employment and Payroll

Back in late 2019, I published a tabulation of data from the employment and payroll phase of the 2017 Census of Governments.  The data included full-time equivalent (full time workers plus part time workers converted into full time workers based on hours worked) state and local government employment, by function (police, parks, schools), per 100,000 residents of each area.  The population data was taken from Local Area Personal Income spreadsheets from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  For the population of the rural areas of New York State as a whole, I subtracted New York City, the Downstate Suburbs, and the Upstate Urban Counties from the state total.  All this sort of data usually gets revised as new information becomes available.  But when the new population data was released, soon after I had completed the entire effort with spreadsheets, tables, charts and posts, what I found was a shock.

https://larrylittlefield.wordpress.com/2019/11/24/the-upstate-ny-rural-population-boom/

Somehow the population data for New York City had been altered – and inflated, thus reducing apparent NYC government employment per 100,000 residents. This wasn’t the usual correction. It turns out that in the old data, all the state’s counties combined didn’t add to the New York State total! Since I had gotten the population for the rural Rest of New York State by subtraction, the population of that region was underestimated by a significant percent, causing the region’s population losses, and its government employment per 100,000 residents, to be exaggerated.

I immediately published revised versions of the large spreadsheets with data for all government functions.  And now, I have gone back and altered the spreadsheets on individual government functions, the tables, the charts, and the posts on those functions, as well. The changes aren’t great enough to alter any conclusions.  I changed many numbers, in the tables, charts and text, but very few words.  Right is right, however, and the data linked here has now been fixed for that BEA error.

https://larrylittlefield.wordpress.com/the-latest-public-finance-spreadsheets/

Having made that effort, I have decided to publish a graphic summary of the employment and payroll phase of the 2017 Census of Governments, along with links back to the more detailed (and now corrected) posts.

Current Employment Survey Data for 2020: New York City Reduced our Public Services, but Annual Average Local Government Employment Barely Fell – while the Home Health Care Boom Stalled

As noted in my prior post, the release of rebenchmarked annual average Current Employment Survey data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that NYC lost the staggering total of 517,500 private wage and salary jobs from 2019 to 2020, by far the most since at least 1950 and probably the most ever.   On a percentage basis only Hawaii fared worse among U.S. areas of significant size.

https://larrylittlefield.wordpress.com/2021/03/21/rebenchmarked-current-employment-survey-data-for-2020-new-york-city-was-clobbered-last-year-but-the-long-term-data-is-still-very-positive/

More recent data is even worse.  The monthly e-mail from the New York State Department of Labor shows a decrease of 626,800 private sector wage and salary jobs (15.3%) in NYC from February 2020, before the shutdowns, to February 2021.

The annual average data shows that while the sectors that were shut down suffered the steepest job losses, there were significant decreases across all sectors – even health care.  And yet annual average New York City local government employment was just 1,400 (0.3%) lower in 2020 than it had been in 2019.  For state and local government combined the decrease was just 1,600 (0.3%).

Measured from February 2020 to February 2021, the NYC local government employment is down just 4,200 (0.8%), with a decrease of just 600 (0.4%) for elementary and secondary schools – despite falling enrollment.  And Mayor DeBlasio has cut deals with the unions to guarantee no layoffs until half a year into the next Mayor’s term, regardless of circumstances or consequences.

Bureaucracy: 2017 Census of Governments Employment & Payroll Data

This post will complete my series on different government functions based on employment and payroll data from the Census of Governments, for March 2017 and previous years. It includes data for the kind of general government and legal workers one might generally expect to find hanging around in city and town halls, and county seats and courthouses, reviewing applications, keeping records, handling cases and doing inspections, rather than providing services.  At the local government level the functions included are, as delineated by the U.S. Census Bureau, Health, Financial Administration, Other Local Government Administration, Judicial and Legal, and Other and Unallocable. At the state level there are two additional functions:  Social Insurance Administration, basically state Departments of Labor, and “Other Education,” which includes oversight agencies such as the New York State Department of Education and Board of Regents.

For decades I’ve been making the case that for public employment and expenditures alike there is not much to see here. New York State is about average when you add everything up, and no part of the state is really out of line. Today, however, things have changed enough in one part of the state that this time around I don’t feel that to be true anymore.

Public Amenities: Census of Governments Employment & Payroll for 2017

This post is about government functions I refer to as public amenities:  parks, recreation, culture, and libraries. Just because they are amenities doesn’t mean they are unimportant, although they are often treated that way in a budget crisis.  For the young and old, in fact, the availability of these shared, social spaces is one of the most important reasons to live in central cities. In modern suburbs people shuffle between detached homes and workplaces, and generally only interact with people they don’t already know in places that have significant admission fees. In New York City you can be with people, get entertained, and get exercise without spending much of anything.

Taxpaying workers who don’t have children in public schools, don’t commit crimes, and aren’t on Medicaid, are cash cows for the City and State of New York. These public amenities, along with streets, mass transit and garbage pick up, are really all they get for the taxes they pay, since the cost of water and sewer service is funded by charges.  These are things that benefit everyone, but given the special interest-driven politics of state and local government here, the goal is always to take from everyone and give it to the “special people.”  So benefitting everyone is the same as benefitting no one in particular who actually matters.  Fortunately, Census of Governments employment and payroll data shows that as of March 2017 New York City’s agencies in these functions were not understaffed (unlike in the past for parks), and their workers were not underpaid. We’ll see what happens when the tax dollars aren’t gushing in from yet another Wall Street and real estate bubble, as they have been.

Infrastructure: Census of Governments Employment and Payroll Data for 2017

This series of posts based on Census of Governments state and local government employment and payroll data for March 2017 (and 2007 and 1997) continues with a post on infrastructure functions:  highways and streets, mass transit, air transportation, water transportation, government-run electric and gas utilities, water supply, sewerage, and solid waste management.  Along with related private sector activity.  When I joined New York City Transit out of graduate school in 1986, I was told it was the largest industrial/blue collar employer in New York City.  It probably still is, with the other functions described adding as many blue collar jobs, and jobs with contractors many more.

In the past 10 years or so, subway riders have experienced a drastic decrease in their quality of life despite rising fares, relative to the very low inflation of the period.  This is something I have attributed to costs from the past – the big pension increase in 2000, with huge costs deferred until later, and decades of zero state and city funding for the MTA capital plan, with money borrowed instead.  But after reviewing the data for these functions, I have begun to wonder if even worse is coming. And not just at the MTA. But we will have water!

Hospitals, Social Services, and Housing: Census of Governments Employment and Payroll Data for 2017

Health care vies with elementary and secondary education as the largest destination for federal and state government spending.  In fact, when I added it up in 2006 the federal, state and local governments were already paying for 75.0% to 80.0% of third party (insurance and public program) health care expenditures nationwide, which is to say expenditures other than co-payments and services people pay for themselves in cash (such as cosmetic surgery).  Directly (Medicare, Medicaid, the VA Hospital system) or indirectly (health insurance purchased on behalf of civilian public employees and their families, the exclusion of employer funded health insurance from taxable income, other tax breaks).

Socialized Medicine? Get Real, It’s Already Here

Since then the population has aged, leading to more Medicare and Medicaid spending, Medicaid has been expanded to more working people, and Obamacare has added another form of indirect federal support for private health insurance.  For all the discussion of “socialized medicine,” here in the U.S. the government share of third party health care expenditures is probably up to 85.0% or so, and as a percent of GDP it probably exceeds the cost of the entire health care system in developed countries.

Health care and social services, however, are provided by the government primarily through payments to private sector organizations, generally non-profits in New York City and throughout the Northeast.  Therefore in this, the fifth post based on my tabulation of state and local government employment and payroll data from the 2017 Census of Governments, data on related private sector organizations from the Bureau of Labor Statistics will take center stage.   And this analysis features the most shocking trend I have found so far.

Public Safety: Census of Governments Employment and Payroll Data for 2017

In March 1997, New York City was very early into what would become a long decline in its crime rate.  The number of officers was inflated by thousands of extra officers hired with an extra tax surcharge under the “Safe Streets Safe City” plan under former Mayor Dinkins and his police commissioner Ray Kelly.  New York City had 42,715 full time equivalent police officers, 2.7 times as many as the US. average per 100,000 residents.  By March 2007 crime had plunged, a decrease widely credited to the “Broken Window” and “Compstat” innovations of former Mayor Giuliani, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, and his successors.  The city promoted itself as the safest in the nation.  New York City had 46,776 police officers, 2.8 times the U.S. average per 100,000 residents.  In March 2017 crime had plunged further. Mayor Bill DeBlasio had been elected in part by promising to get an out of control police department back under control.  New York City had 49,477 police officers, or 3.0 times the U.S. average per 100,000 residents, though their mean pay was only slightly above the U.S. average.

So data from the various Censuses of Governments that I have tabulated over the decades has shown.  But is that really the case?  And what about the NYC Fire Department, the much-criticized NYC Corrections Department, the state prisons, and comparable agencies elsewhere in New York State, the NY metro area and country?  Are we really being told the truth about the actual reason for the plan to close the jails at Rikers Island?  Let’s take a look.

Public Higher Education: Census of Governments Employment and Payroll Data for 2017

The big issue in higher education, or at least the one that has been pushed in the media, is the burden of student loans.  And the explanation for this crisis that has been advanced is the rising cost of college.  According to sources deemed reliable, while tuition has soared in private colleges and universities due to an amenities arms race and a better deal for faculty, in public higher education unwilling taxpayers are to blame.

https://hbr.org/2019/09/what-will-it-take-to-solve-the-student-loan-crisis

The roots of rising college and university costs are not difficult to identify. For the nation’s 1,600-plus public institutions, the chief culprit has been major reductions in state support; public investment in higher education has been in retreat in the states since about 1980, according to the American Council on Education. State funding and subsidies were cut by more than $7 billion between 2008 and 2018. What many call the “privatization of public higher education” has shifted most of the states’ share of instructional costs to students and their families, with disruptive results for both students and institutions.

Here is another “study” saying the same thing.

Click to access RB_512HJRB.pdf

I once believed it, but when whenever I looked at the available Census Bureau data on higher education finances, it didn’t fully support it. With the availability of state and local government employment and payroll data for the 2017 Census of Governments, I took another look.

Census of Governments Employment and Payroll Data for March 2017 (1997 and 2007)

The U.S Census Bureau conducts a Census of Governments every five years on the employment, payroll, revenues, expenditures, assets and debts of every state and local government in the country. (State-level estimates for state and local government are released in other years).   The data is reported by government function (police, schools, parks, etc.)  The Bureau recently released its employment and payroll data for March 2017, and I have spent a considerable number of hours tabulating it to get it into usable form.

I now have spreadsheets that show local government full-time equivalent employment (full time workers plus part time workers converted into full time workers based on hours worked), by function, for the United States, New York City, other areas of the state, every county in New York State and New Jersey, and other states and counties elsewhere in the country selected for comparison.  This is expressed per 100,000 residents of each area.  Selected private sector industries that are either substantially government-funded (health and social services and infrastructure construction) or a substitute for government services (private schools and automobile-related industries) are shown on the same basis.  And local government payroll per worker of each area, expressed as a percent higher or lower than the U.S average for that function, and compared with the extent that an area’s private sector earnings per worker are higher and lower than the U.S. average.  Similar data is provided for state government in for U.S. as a whole, compared with New York State, New Jersey, and other states I consider relevant.  This is a process I will repeat for the finance phase of the 2017 Census of Governments, when it is released.

As is my custom, this post will simply provide the data in tables and spreadsheets, explain where it comes from and how I tabulated it, and provide a brief overview of trends in total state and local government employment and payroll.  Function-by-function posts, with the data reorganized and charts included, will follow.  Read this post to fully understand what you are seeing.  Download the spreadsheets and look at the numbers to decide for yourself what they mean, before getting my take on them.  I’ll write more when I can.  But anyone else is free to use this information right now.

Parks, Recreation, Culture, and Solid Waste Management: Census Bureau Public Employment and Payroll Data for March 2016 and March 2006 (And Related Private Employment)

When I first looked at the March 2016 employment and payroll data from the Governments Division of the U.S. Census Bureau I thought I had two rare stories – New York City’s local government data moving closer to the U.S. average rather than further away.   After a couple of decades of being much lower, the city’s full time equivalent local government Parks, Recreation and Culture employment per 100,000 city residents was approaching the U.S. average.   And after decades of being 60 to 90 percent higher, New York City’s payroll per full time equivalent employment in the Solid Waste Management function was above the U.S. average by a percentage closer to what the average private sector payroll per worker in Downstate New York is above the U.S. average. Upon further consideration, and pending anything I hear back from the Bureau, however, it appears only one of those things is true.