Gov't Job Losses During Obama's Term — 600,000

Heavy job loss in the public sector remains a concern as President Barack Obama begins his re-election bid. More than 600,000 state and local government employees have lost jobs since the beginning of his term, The Washington Post reported.

The public-sector job losses include almost 200,000 education workers and, while private sector employment is recovering, the public sector is not. “The job losses at state and local governments is the most serious weight on the job market,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told the Post.

However, others argue the reduction is good.

American Enterprise Institute scholar Andrew Biggs told the Post that state and local governments had become bloated. “It strikes an emotional chord with people if we have teacher layoffs, but we have hired a great many teachers in the past several decades,” Biggs said.

He told the Post that the layoffs “ultimately get you closer to where you should be in terms of the size of the public-sector workforce.”