In the previous post, we talked about the new monthly jobs report, but in keeping with tradition, here’s a slightly different chart — one showing just the private sector job market.
Overall, the U.S. economy added a terrible 18,000 jobs in June, but as has been the case for a long while, there was a major gap between the public and private sectors. Businesses added 57,000 jobs in May, while 39,000 jobs were lost in the public sector at the same time, thanks to budget cuts at the state and local level.
Those are, by the way, budget cuts Republicans are desperate to bring to the federal level.
The new numbers are the weakest in over a year, and further evidence that the economy is in desperate need of a boost. It can’t get that boost, of course, because congressional Republicans refuse to consider anything other than austerity measures, which necessarily make unemployment worse.
Making matters slightly worse, the private-sector totals for April and May were also revised in the wrong direction.
And with that, here’s a different homemade chart, showing monthly job losses/gains in the private sector since the start of the Great Recession. The image makes a distinction — red columns point to monthly job totals under the Bush administration, while blue columns point to job totals under the Obama administration. (The chart is now smaller to fit the redesigned website.)
