Yesterday’s Asbury Park Press front page hit-piece on Christie’s flubbing some jobs data in various public appearances glosses over the most significant fact in the article. Along with some apparent mis-statements about private sector job growth – I wonder if the author, Michael Symons, had all those numbers in his head, or if he had to look them up – the Big Man stated that New Jersey has the highest number of government workers per capita in the country when he meant to say per square mile. Actually the high density of government workers is not suprising in the most densly populated state. We probably have the highest density of every occupation. (Well, maybe not cattle ranchers.)
As far as the important statistic, government workers per capita, Mr. Symons takes great satisfaction in pointing out that New Jersey ranks 35th in the country. Here are his numbers:
Federal data indicate the state ranks 35th among the 50 states, at 71.1 public workers per 1,000 residents. Wyoming is first, at just over 130. New Jersey ranks 34th if federal employees are excepted, 23rd for local employees only and 13th for state employees only.
One thing I don’t understand is that if we rank 35th highest with all government workers, but 13th and 23rd in state and local workers, how does eliminating federal workers only move us up one percentage point to 34th? That number is suspect to me and I might call the newspaper to ask for an explanation.
What the other numbers tell me is:
1) We rank very low in the number of federal workers per capita here, which is not surprising considering that New Jersey is getting screwed by the federal government. New Jersey gets the lowest percentage of the money we send to Washington back in federal spending. So when federal workers are included of course it will lower the total government workers per capita. All the other states are getting the federal paychecks and we are getting the bill. Great job Team Lautenberg/Menendez!
2) The number of local workers per capita is pretty much average for the country. I guess that Senate President Stephen M. Sweeny (Todd), the Demon Senator of State Street, is unaware of this. He blames small towns for New Jersey’s sky-high taxes and lusts to take his razor to the throat of any town with a population under 20,000. (Self-determination be damned!)
3) NEW JERSEY IS 13TH HIGHEST PER CAPITA IN STATE WORKERS! This is the number that reporter Symons, Governer Christie, Senator Sweeny (Todd), and all the rest of them should be looking at and DOING SOMETHING ABOUT!
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