My recent post on government size prompted several readers to ask a natural follow-up question: how has the government’s role as employer changed over time? To answer, the following chart shows federal, state, and local employment as a share of overall U.S. payrolls: In July, governments accounted for 16.5 percent of U.S. employment. That’s down [...]

Welcome to the season of jobs plans. GOP presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman offered his last week. President Obama will propose his before Thursday night’s football game.  But today is GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s day. And at least when it comes to tax policy, he veers a bit to the left of the new Republican orthodoxy.  To be [...]

There has been a lot of talk in Washington recently about “job-killing tax increases.” Raising taxes, the argument goes, would lead businesses to hire fewer workers and stifle our already weak economic recovery. But I haven’t heard anyone talking about “job-killing spending cuts.” In macroeconomic terms, tax increases and spending cuts have qualitatively the same [...]