Here’s the jobs growth Obama promised—in federal workers

Never let it be said that Barack Obama hasn’t delivered on any promises. He promised more jobs, and he’s delivered. The only problem is that those jobs are the ones we want the least — government employees, the kind we have to pay for.

Economist Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University put together this chart showing the trend of federal employment over the last decade. You can see the sharp uptick in the last three years. She comments:

“On net, since January 2008, federal employment has increased by 85,000 – counter to the movements of employment in state and local governments and in the private sector.  In aggregate statistics such as the unemployment rate, this increase has obscured harsh private sector job losses.”

The good news — if you want to look at it that way — is that 85,000 additional people have jobs. The bad news is that taxpayers are having to pay for these unproductive jobs. The further bad news is that the productive part of the economy is doing even worse than the unemployment numbers suggest, because this unproductive hiring masks the number of true job losses.

When are the neo-Keynesians calling the shots in Washington going to accept that their economic voodoo doesn’t work?