New Jersey's Massive Growth Industry: Government Workers

The New York Post reports:

One thing that Jersey's patronage-ridden government has been doing is hiring workers at a rapid rate, far faster than most other states. Corzine's recent pledge to trim the state's workforce by 3,000 employees (as part of $500 million in spending cuts) drew a howl from public-sector unions, as well as warnings from some editorialists that the cuts might hurt services.

Corzine might have noted that from 2000 to 2006 - after the Wall Street tech-stock meltdown and the economic fallout from 9/11 - a succession of NJ governors added 10,000 workers to the state's executive workforce, a 17 percent rise, even as the state's population grew by only 4 percent.

The hiring spree didn't stop there. State agencies and authorities not directly controlled by the governor were rapidly boosting their own payrolls, adding about 13,000 more full-time (or full-time-equivalent) workers to the state's payrolls, reports the Census Bureau. Only a few other states increased their public payrolls as quickly; all were far larger than Jersey and had more rapidly growing populations. By contrast, even New York was a model of efficiency, growing its workforce by less than 1 percent during the same period.

Propelled by the hiring (as well as higher-than-average government pay and fat benefits), New Jersey hiked state spending by almost 6 percent a year from 2000-08, nearly double the inflation rate. To pay for that spree, the state's politicians rapidly ramped up taxes.

What better proof,elections don't make government accountable.