Recent trends in the national labor market demonstrate the harm inflicted on the economy by cutting government spending and laying off government employees in the middle of an already challenging economic recovery. Just as with private sector layoffs, government layoffs increase the number of people out of work. And given that there are already nearly three times the number of people looking for work than there are job openings, these public sector layoffs only serve to increase overall unemployment.
As a recent Brooking Institute report shows, several years’ worth of cuts to government spending across the nation—resulting in large-scale layoffs in the public sector—has contributed to the nation’s lagging labor market by increasing the pool of workers who need jobs. Taken together, federal, state, and local governments have laid off 642,000 workers in the 36 months since the formal end of the Great Recession in June 2009.
Normally, the public sector accounts for a bit over 9% of the nation’s total employment, yet these government layoffs—coupled with additional spending cuts—have held back the number of government workers from keeping up with population growth. If the nation had maintained its average government employment levels over 2000-2007, the American labor market would have 1.7 million more jobs than it does currently today (see following figure) and the national unemployment rate would stand at 7.1% a full point lower than the current rate of 8.2%…
Job Market Monitor 
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