President Obama’s call last year for “shared sacrifice” doesn’t extend to federal employees, at least based on the details of his administration’s 2010 budget released this week.
At a time when the official unemployment rate is nearing double digits, and 6.35 million people are receiving unemployment benefits, the U.S. government is on a hiring binge.
Executive branch employment — 1.98 million in 2009, excluding the Postal Service and the Defense Department — is set to increase by 15.6 percent for the 2010 fiscal year. Most of that is thanks to the Census Bureau hiring 102,000 temporary workers, but not counting them still yields a net increase of 2 percent in one year.
There’s little belt-tightening in evidence in Washington, D.C.: Counting benefits, the average pay per federal worker will leap from $72,800 in 2008 to $75,419 next year.
Meanwhile, according to Forbes’ layoff tracker, there have been 558,087 layoffs since November 2008 at large public companies; even local school districts aren’t immune. That’s just a sliver of the total unemployed, which government data estimate to be 8.6 percent of the workforce, or an alternate method of reckoning that counts discouraged workers puts at 20 percent.
Author of “Reparations and America’s 2nd Civil War
Reparations and America’s 2nd Civil War: Malensek, Scott: 9798864028674: Amazon.com: Books
I heard that Obama wants to hire 20,000 bureaucrats at the Dept. of Defense at the same time he is cutting missile defense and fighter jets.
Will we be sending those bureaucrats into battle armed with stacks of federal regulations?
I think his plan at Defense is to flood the place with libs and attempt a coup similar to the ones that took over State and CIA where common sense no longer reigns.
I’ll be honest. I am tring to get a federal job. I am retired and rated at 30 percent disability. The jobs I am seeking are in aircraft maintenance, tactical or transport. And the first qualification is 30 percent disabled. It is because I am tired of the ups and downs at places like Learjet and Hawker Beechcraft, where I have been laid off. At Learjet it was twice. The second time was permanent due to restructuring. I hit the road with a railroad contractor for four years. And thhen I went back to aircraft in September of last year. I got walked out with my notice on 26 February. The WARN act kept the paycheck coming until 8 April. Now it’s unemployment with the twenty-five dollar a week stimulus. It totals $443 a week. Some stimulus.
I want one of those jobs because it is something I know. Aircraft hydraulic and pneumatic systems are pretty much the same anywhere.
And yes, I would go to Altus, OK.
Nope. The New Hires are ACORN Socialists to jerrymand the Census.
Wake Up America!