Public sector jobs continue plummet

Workers in the public sector: welcome to reality.

Clamor over the national debt and lingering effects of the recession are nudging government workers out of the job security womb, according to data recently released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The data show the number of state and local jobs hit a peak in August 2008 and have fallen more than 3% in the years since. The drop in employment in these sectors since 2008 is comparatively worse than another big plunge that occurred in the early 1980s.

That latter dip yielded a drop of approximately 3% in local and state jobs within the first two years, which is a faster descent than the fall since 2008. But, the data show that hiring in the two sectors had nearly rebounded from its trough by 1984.

The two sectors haven't seen employment fall this drastically since the Korean War, which leaves some questioning how secure public sector jobs really are.