Just 16 states, led by 11 in the economically hard-hit Northeast, cut state government employment during the recent recession, a research institute reported Saturday.
Only two states, Massachusetts and New York, saw a reduction in local government employees during the period, the Albany-based Center for the Study of the States said. In Massachusetts, there was a 5.6 percent cut in the number of local government workers, while New York had a 1.6 percent reduction."Despite talk about falling government employment during the 1990-91 recession and its aftermath, the state and local work force has been increasing in most states," the center's report said.
Utah enjoyed the largest growth in the private sector (12.3 percent) as well as the largest increase in state government employment (15.3 percent).
The report concluded that "the media and some government officials have conveyed a somewhat misleading impression of the magnitude of state retrenchment in the past few years."
It also cautioned that while a third of the states studied had reduced employment, "in many cases the cuts have been smaller than the figures often bandied about."
Nonetheless, the center said it was clear the weak economy had at least slowed the growth of state and local governments. The annual growth rate for them in the 1980s was 2.4 percent.
The center is part of the State University of New York's Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government.
The study, comparing employment in June 1990 to June 1993, found state government employment up 3.5 percent nationwide during the three-year period and local government jobs up 5.1 percent.
During the same period, private, non-farm employment fell by 1.3 percent. The drop was greatest in Connecticut at 10.2 percent. In New York, private sector employment fell by 5.1 percent. Utah had the largest growth in private sector employment, 12.3 percent, followed by Idaho, at 11.1 percent.
Sarah Ritchie, the center's assistant director and author of the study, said there were fewer than 4.2 million state government employees in June 1990 and more than 4.3 million three years later. On the local government front, the number rose from just over 11 million to more than 11.6 million.
"An important reason for the growth of state-local employment is the rising number of corrections workers due to the rapidly expanding prison population," Ritchie said.
"Tough sentencing laws and the `war on drugs' led to enormous increases in state institutions' prison population, which inevitably results in more hiring," she added.
Among individual states, the largest cuts in state government work forces came in Massachusetts (8.9 percent); Pennsylvania (7.4 percent); New York (7.2 percent); Montana (6.8 percent); and Illinois (6.6 percent).
The largest increases in state government employment came in Utah (15.3 percent); Nevada (14.9 percent); West Virginia (13.6 percent); Hawaii (13 percent); and Idaho (13.5 percent).
Oklahoma and Wyoming had no change in the size of their state work forces, the center said.
On the local government front, the largest growth came in Nevada (28.2 percent); Kentucky (13.7 percent); Oregon (12.3 percent); Washington (12.3 percent); and Oklahoma (11.4 percent).
In the nation's largest state, California, state government employment grew by 1.3 percent; local government grew by 2.2 percent; and private sector employment fell by 5.3 percent.
Ritchie said there did seem to be a correlation between population growth and increases in the size of a state's public work force.
In fact, the 1990 Census found Nevada's population grew 49 percent in the previous decade, the most of any state. Utah's grew by 17 percent.
Such growth often means more public employees, especially in the schools, Ritchie said.
"Education is such a population sensitive employment area, and it's just been booming out there," Ritchie said when asked about the Nevada experience.
"It's almost totally education," Perry Comeaux, Nevada's budget director, agreed in assessing his state government's employment growth. "It surprises me that we're second nationally, but the University of Nevada system growth has a lot to do with that."
On the local government front, Comeaux said: "Nevada has led the nation in our population growth for some time now, and that definitely has something to do with the growth in the number of local government employees."
Local government employment in the booming Las Vegas area was up almost 35 percent during the three-year period, officials said.
The center's study was based on unpublished data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Ritchie said the Southeast was the only region where state government growth routinely outpaced that at the local government level. In Georgia, for instance, state government employment grew 5.4 percent while local government payrolls increased 1.8 percent.
Ritchie predicted state and local governments would continue to grow, but at a much slower rate than in the past.
"Competitive pressures and taxpayer resistance will constrain tax increases," she said. "Interest in `reinventing government' will not be a passing fad."
"The economy is just not recovering quickly," she added.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Growth in the West
The growth in employment for state and local government and for the private sector, June 1990 to June 1993:
State Local Private
California 1.3 2.2 -5.3
Colorado 5.4 7.0 7.4
Hawaii 13.0 7.7 -0.4
Idaho 13.5 10.0 11.1
Montana -6.8 10.3 9.2
Nevada 14.9 28.2 4.6
Utah 15.3 10.8 12.3
Wyoming 0.0 7.2 4.1
Source: State University of New York's Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute- Center for the Study of the States; based on unpublished data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.