The Private Sector Is Doing Fine

President Obama stated last week that "the private sector is doing fine."

Really???

• The overall unemployment rate is 8.2%.  There are 12.5 million unemployed Americans.  Another 11 million are discouraged, underemployed or working part-time so are not considered unemployed.
• The unemployment rate for government workers is 4.2%.  Compare that to private sector workers in construction(14.2%), hospitality services (9.7%), agriculture (9.5%) and professional and business services (8.5%).
• There are 89 million million Americans over the age of 16 who are not in the labor force.  This includes students, stay-at-home parents, retirees and those too discouraged to look for work.  This number has increased by 9 million over the last 4 years.  It is up almost 6 million in the last 2 years. There are 2.7 million more Americans not in the labor force than this time last year!
• It doesn't matter if people are not working because they are unemployed, discouraged, retired, in school, on disability, or caring for children at home. There are bills to be paid in this country. People need shelter, food, energy ,medical care whether they are working or not.  Those bills can only be paid by those who are working.  They are either paid for directly by individuals and their families, by charities (via charitable contributions) or by the government (via taxes). The lower the percentage working, the greater burden those working carry for everyone else.  
• The average American family has seen their net worth drop 40% from 2007 to 2010 (from $126,400 to $77,300) according to a recent survey by the Federal Reserve.  
• Average wages for federal civilian employees (using the most recent data available from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis in 2010) are $83,679 compared to $51,896 for those in the private sector.

Source: The Cato Institute 

• Total compensation (including employee benefits) for federal civilian employees in 2010 averaged $126,141-more than double the $62,757 that private sector workers earn.

Source: The Cato Institute

• Total GDP growth since 2008 in the private sector was an abysmal 5.3% between 2008 and 2011.  On the other hand, GDP growth in the public sector over the same period increased by 7.7% according to U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data.  Recently, private sector GDP has improved and public sector GDP has fallen, primarily due to cutbacks in state and local budgets.  This is the data point that I think that President Obama was thinking of when he made his comment.  Of course, these state budgets are out of whack due to unsustainable government pension and benefit programs and a lagging private sector that has reduced tax revenues. 

If you have access to all of this data and information, how would anyone come to the conclusion that the private sector is doing fine?  It only occurs if your perspective is that government is the only answer to our problems.