fbpx

One Government Employee For Every 17 People

By Art Gallagher

Now that Senate President Stephen Sweeney has agreed with Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver’s proposal that government employee pension and health benefit reforms be temporary and guts key elements of the reforms that Governor Christie and Sweeney agreed to, it seems as though we are in danger of business as usual  prevailing in Trenton. 

If Governor Chris Christie goes along with this “compromise,” real sustainable reform of New Jersey’s government is not going to happen.  “Reform” will just be a short term fix to get us through the tough economic times made with the rosy assumption that the economy will improve to the point where we can afford to bestow free health care and overly generous pensions to our “public servants.”

What I found most alarming about this Star Ledger article was not that Sweeney and Oliver may have outmaneuvered Christie (InTheLobby speculates that the unions have already agreed to the deal despite their public protests to the contrary and that Christie will go along with it), but the fact that the deal effects the state’s 500,000 public workers.

That’s one public worker for every 17 New Jersey residents. 

I’m assuming that includes county and municipal workers, as the U.S. Census reports that NJ has 154,000 state employees and 360,000 local government employees.  Will legislation currently being negotiated in Trenton override contracts that counties and municipalities already have in place?  If so, that would be terrible for Middletown taxpayers where the the governing body got the police to agree to pay 25% of their health care in order to avoid layoffs.  How would the 2% property tax cap work if the State makes deals that override better deals that municipal governments have negotiated.

Hopefully the Star Ledger reporter got his figures wrong.

Regardless of the largess we bestow on state and local government employees, 500,000 employees “serving” 8.7 million people seems like awfully big government.  And that doesn’t include federal government employees located in New Jersey.

I various government websites for about an hour trying to find how many federal government employees are located in New Jersey.  I found that the federal government, with 2,000,000 employees, not including the post office, is the nation’s largest employer.  85% of federal employees are located outside of the Washington DC metro area.  But I couldn’t find a state by state break down of the employees.  I wonder why that information is so hard to find.

Let’s assume its only 50,000 between Homeland Security, the military, law enforcement and social security offices.

That would mean that in New Jersey, one in every 16 people is on the government payroll.

It is little wonder that New Jersey is rank next to last in freedom.

More from my site

Posted: June 14th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Pensions, Public Employee Unions | Tags: , | 7 Comments »

7 Comments on “One Government Employee For Every 17 People”

  1. anonymous said at 1:07 pm on June 14th, 2011:

    Ang Gov you-tube caves in 3….2…1

  2. James Hogan said at 2:25 pm on June 14th, 2011:

    I could be wrong, but I suspect that the 1 in 17 number is if you’re looking on the bright-side; the real number is probably more like 1 in 9, maybe worse.

    First, take everyone who is on unemployment, welfare, “disabled”, in prison, living solely on gov’t funded pensions/retirement, and count, wholly or partly, them in; current working taxpayers are paying for them all.

    Second, there are significant amounts of people who work in the private sector where the entire private operation is funded entirely by public grants/research funding, etc. The workers are private, but funded entirely through taxpayers; medical, educational, and/or military “private” operations seem to usually fall into this category.

    BTW – I recently learned from some “Republicans” at a recent dinner I was at *wink**wink* that various local governments are also in, or trying to get into, the Real-Estate business these days; buying land with public grant money or loans, as if it’s not taxpayer money, and then trying to lease the land to private industries. I wonder how many of those 1 in 17, or 1 in 9, are Government Real-Estate Agents? ReMax must have closed shop, I thought that real-estate was their gig?

  3. mrdenis said at 5:07 pm on June 14th, 2011:

    If Christie is the best line of defense the taxpayers have ……we are doomed .I just read a article about how the private sector paychecks have shrunk over the last decade .Amazingly NJ has not only expanded the public workforce but have increased wages to unsustainable levels . So now not only must the private workforce pay for themselves ,but provide with benifits of which they can only dream …..people are leaving and their leaving faster than most believe ,it’s only a matter of time when it will br the public sector that must support it all …..then what

  4. Barry said at 5:27 pm on June 14th, 2011:

    You forgot to add the Dept of Interior employees for the Sandy Hook.

  5. Justified Right said at 8:57 pm on June 14th, 2011:

    It’s near 9 pm and I’m just getting off work. Have to earn enough money for those government guys to retire with salary and health benefits, dontcha know!

  6. Harold Kane said at 9:16 am on June 15th, 2011:

    Art,
    In 2008 there were 6,200 non professional (broom-pushers) employed by the Boards of Education in Middlesex County, alone.
    The 500,000 number is probably correct in that we have 583 municipalities and 600 school boards. You aslo need to include public higher ed, which people tend to forget. This equates to one public employee for every ten acres of land in the state.
    If they did windows, you might have something.

  7. Government Wages - Big Pay Little Work! | Internet-Scam-Busters.Com said at 2:16 am on September 29th, 2011:

    […] the IRS transfer the jobs to the low pay workers in Tawan. By mauro_trainer at 08/15/2010 16:09 Government Wages Government wages… Government employee wages have grown to more than double as com…nment employee wages have grown to more than double as compared to what private sector workers earn. […]