Economically, public sector jobs are pretty much a net loss. Since the wages of government workers are paid by taxes, so are all the taxes that they pay, paid by the private sector taxpayers. Since public sector workers rarely produce anything, the value of their economic contribution is in the services they provide. Some of these services are necessary (national defense, public order, ect).; some are extremely useful economically (maintaining transportation and communication networks for example); but some are economically negative.