Robert Higgs, editor of The Independent Review and a Freeman columnist, has a revealing article on today’s employment and unemployment. Juicy tidbit:

Total employment peaked in 2007 at 137.6 million persons on nonfarm payrolls, fell slightly in 2008, and then dropped precipitously in 2009 to 132.0 persons, for a two-year loss of 5.6 million jobs. In 2009, total employment was approximately equal to its magnitude in 2001, even though the labor force had grown substantially in the interim. The sharp recent decline in employment, which normally increases from year to year along with the labor force, has been bad enough, but when we examine the components of aggregate employment, we discover even worse news.We find that the loss of employment has occurred entirely in the private sector: employment fell from 115.4 million persons in 2007 to 109.5 million persons in 2009, a decline that took private employment back to its level at the end of the 1990s. As private employment has collapsed since 2007, however, the government payroll has actually grown slightly from 22.2 million persons in 2007 to 22.5 million persons in 2009, which puts this class of employment roughly 1.7 million persons above its magnitude in 2000. [Emphasis added.]

Read the full article here.So the alleged government “stimulus” has been a bomb. For example, it was supposed to revive the construction industry and create jobs. But…

[T]the AP looked at … [t]he more than 700 counties that got the most stimulus money per capita for road construction, and the more than 700 counties that received no money at all….There was no difference in unemployment trends between the group of counties that received the most stimulus money and the group that received none, the analysis found.

Full article is here.How many truly private-sector jobs were not created because government hogged the capital?HT: Chris Coyne