In Search of Private Sector Jobs

By: Larry Walker, Jr.

Without question, the majority of private sector jobs created in 2010 were created in the Service Sector. Understanding precisely where is quite revealing. After my last blog post, I received the following comments, from a blogger known as Patriot01: “Ever notice that they never say what KIND of jobs they’ve allegedly “created”? And I’d like an itemized list of the jobs “saved”………wouldn’t you?” Well, of course I would, wouldn’t you? Are you ready?

Education and Health Services

Drilling down into the numbers, we found that most of those jobs were created in the Education and Health Services sub-sector. Yet when we analyzed this sector, we found that job growth has been fairly constant, even throughout the recession. In fact, you can call this a recession proof sector (graph and table below).

Series Id: CES6500000001
Seasonally Adjusted
Super Sector: Education and health services
Industry: Education and health services
NAICS Code: –
Data Type: ALL EMPLOYEES, THOUSANDS

Under President Bush, job growth in this sub-sector averaged 465,000 jobs per year, even during the worst of the recession. So far under Obama, annual job growth in this sub-sector is averaging around 332,000. So although the industry has been virtually recession proof, the number of jobs created under Obama is on the decline.

Under President Bush a total of 3,720,000 jobs were added to this sub-sector during his eight-year term. And so far under Obama a total of 578,000 jobs have been created. In terms of percentages, during the Bush years the sub-sector grew at an average of 2.8% annually, while under Obama average job growth has cooled to 1.7%.

So does this look like anything remotely close to proof of the absurd statement that, “Obama created more jobs in 2010 than Bush did in eight years?” Not hardly. But there’s more.

Employment and Temporary Help Services

The other sub-sectors where we discovered job growth in 2010 were Employment Services, and more specifically Temporary Help Services. So far this year, we have recovered 228,000 jobs in Employment Services, and out of those, 218,000 were under the sub-category of Temporary Help Services (graphs and tables below). Add these to the 261,000 jobs created in the, recession proof, Education and Health Services sector, and together they account for 489,000 jobs “created” in the last nine months, or basically the whole enchilada.

Series Id: CES6056130001
Seasonally Adjusted
Super Sector: Professional and business services
Industry: Employment services
NAICS Code: 5613
Data Type: ALL EMPLOYEES, THOUSANDS

Series Id: CES6056132001
Seasonally Adjusted
Super Sector: Professional and business services
Industry: Temporary help services
NAICS Code: 56132
Data Type: ALL EMPLOYEES, THOUSANDS

Busted Again!

So there it is, Obama’s greatest feat to-date is that he has managed to slow job growth in the Education and Health Services sector, which has always been recession proof; and he has only managed to recover jobs in the Temporary Help Services sub-sector. And this, his cohorts call a great success? Those of us who are rationally-minded beg to differ.

We wonder how long our economy can sustain itself through providing temporary job search services, especially when the type of jobs people want no longer exist. Meanwhile, our non-existent Goods-Producing sector has hemorrhaged 6,524,000 jobs over the last 10 years, and nothing is being done about it. Where are those jobs? In China.

Charts and Tables from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Establishment Data, Table B-1 (here).