In a recent article published in the Magazine section of the NY Times, the author Adam Davidson questions whether jobs can really be created or if they are just shuffled about from one sector to the next. Davidson cites the current dilemma in the UK as his postulation that jobs aren’t really created by government; they are just moved from the public sector to the private sector and back again in an endless circle.
For example, Davidson states that the UK is currently making redundant approximately 500,000 government employees under the premise that these workers will be snatched up by the private sector. In return, the UK government is cutting corporate taxes and relaxing regulations. This is meant to be a huge part of the austerity programme in place, but is it working?
At the moment the economy in the UK is growing extremely slowly, if at all. Statistics, according to Davidson, indicate that few of these former government employees have found work in the private sector and he surmises they aren’t soon to do so.
Of course the article is about the employment crisis in the United States but the problem seems to be global. Not only are there millions of unemployed workers in the US and the UK, but it appears as though the contagion has spread throughout Europe and Asia as well.
If the United States follows the UK’s lead in firing government employees to cut back on spending in the hopes that these workers will be picked up by the private sector, there could be a major impact on the already troubled economy. Currently the United States employs approximately twenty-three million men and women. What would it do to the economy if roughly 10% of that country’s workforce were made redundant? It appears as if we shall soon see.
