South By North Strategies, Ltd.

James Fallows of The Atlantic contemplates the consequences of fiscal austerity.

Main point: for the past two years, private-sector employment has in fact been recovering. It fell by almost 8 percent from its pre-crisis peak, and it has now regained a little less than half of that loss. But during that same period of recovery, public-sector employment has headed downward. As the Rockefeller [Institute] data suggests, the main “jobs, jobs, jobs” headwind for the economy now comes in the form of teachers, police and fire departments, and other state- and local-government employees. Of course in the long run any economy’s health depends on robust private-sector employment. But during recovery from a recession, a job is a job is a job, with all the multiplier effects of families who either have, or lose, their paychecks — not to mention the impact on school children, public safety, maintenance, and so on from the cutbacks.