How is this recovery different from all other recoveries?



After every other recession since the early 1970s, government employment grew. In the four years following the end of the Great Recession, government jobs got the guillotine.



You can see the specialness of our recovery in this compelling graph produced by the Hamilton Project, comparing government employment changes in the four years of recovery after the last six recessions. Since 1970, government employment increased by an average of 1.7 million following a recession. After the Great Recession, government employment has fallen by more than 500,000.

"The policy differences have led to 2.2 million fewer jobs today," Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney write. With 2.2 million more government workers now, assuming the same labor force size, the unemployment rate wouldn't be 7.7 percent. It would be 6.3 percent.



That doesn't mean the "real" unemployment rate is 6.3 percent. It doesn't mean state and local governments should be 2.2 million workers flusher. But it highlights the fact that, in terms of U.S. government responses to recessions, this time is different.



Whatever you think of Rogart, Reinhart, and the art of highlighting Excel boxes, it's intuitive that expansionary public spending (including on people) following a private sector meltdown are useful to help the economy catch up to trend-line growth. But rather than Washington leading the still-weak economy, the cart has led the horse, with the private sector adding roughly 2.2 million jobs over the past year while state, local, and federal governments have shed more than 90,000 jobs.