This past Tuesday, I read a headline that the United States Postal Service was cutting 10 districts, and 7,500 administrative positions. I thought to myself here we go with Federal layoffs – I’m happy to report this isn’t so! If you research further, these position reductions will take place through attrition as eligible workers retire – that’s nice, sure beats a reduction in force. Interesting thing is, I couldn’t find information as to how long this attrition will play out for…somehow I doubt this will all take place in the next year.
This got me to wondering just what the employment statistics are for government workers, and how this example compares to Department of Labor reports. If you haven’t bothered to glance at the Bureau of Labor Statistics January 7th report in regards to December 2010’s employment situation, you might not be aware that 950,000 govies are unemployed. The unemployment rate for government workers is at 4.4% (up from 3.6% a year ago).
Let me summarize for you a few more statistics on public sector employment for December 2010:
- Loss of 10,000 government jobs (while overall jobs increased by 103,000)
- Federal government employment increased by 10,000 jobs (that’s an increase of 28,000 jobs since Dec. 2009)
- State government remained unchanged (overall increase of 6,000 jobs since Dec. 2009)
- Local government decreased by 20,000 jobs (a decline of 256,000 jobs since Dec. 2009)
Based on the above statistics and news reports concerning Federal, state, and local government, it seems as though all levels of government are concerned about the same things…we’re all anticipating changes to cut costs and boost revenues!
interesting stats. and I don’t care what people say but attrition is a BIG win for USPS
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