Some job areas are growing during the recession

The Sunday New York Times Week in Review section had an article wondering When Will HELP Be WANTED. The overall thrust was that rehiring will be slow. Even in the recovery from this recession, job growth will be slow.

What I found interesting was the accompanying graphic, showing jobs lost or gained since December 2007. Attached is a scaled down version, with a few areas highlighted.

You will note that automotive and construction has been devastated, with 35% and 17% job losses. Manufacturing in general is down, with 14% losses. Retail is down 4.9%.

But government is doing just fine. State governments have lost less than 1% of jobs, and this excludes growth in education. And the federal government shows robust job growth of 6.5%.

If this job growth were largely due to the stimulus package, that would be a good thing (at least temporarily) to help stem the recession, though even then I'd prefer that the jobs created be largely in the private sector. However, since these figures date from 2007, they don't reflect the stimulus, they just reflect growth in government bureaucracy. The United States cannot remain competitive on the world stage if the only area of job growth is in government.