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Official numbers released by the government late last week show salaries of federal workers falling slightly farther behind their private-sector counterparts in the last year, by an average of 2.1 percent across the country. The disparity shows wide variations among the 31 regions where the government compares federal pay with salaries for private-sector jobs in order to determine pay raises. The Washington-Baltimore area, for example, showed among the largest gaps, with federal workers 38 percent behind the private sector.

With just 12 days until the November 2 elections, pro-market, small-government candidates, activists, and concerned citizens should study and then disseminate three charts that perfectly encapsulate the status quo that, if all goes well, the midterm vote will capsize. The first of these looks as intricate as an integrated circuit. Titled “Your New Health Care System,” this schematic shows how Obamacare’s hundreds of moving parts will fit together and whirl — or not, as rising health costs at Boeing, McDonald’s, and the United Federation of Teachers (to name a few affected organizations) already reveal. Staff members at the Congressional Joint...

Last week's dismal jobs figures tell us exactly what the President Obama's stimulus did: It temporarily saved jobs in state and local government -- thereby slowing our recovery. Friday's job scorecard for September -- the last before Election Day -- didn't carry even a hint of an imminent boom. Unemployment stayed at 9.6 percent, with private companies adding 64,000 jobs. And 64,000 jobs is nothing. The economy must create nearly five times that to keep up with population growth and replace 7.6 million jobs lost since 2007. Worse, the new hires were down a third from August -- and the...

As head cheerleader of the stagnant and stumbling economy, President Obama has lost all the frills on his pompoms. Exhausted, he stood before cameras yesterday and, in dreary cadences of despair, did his best to draw lipstick on the mouth of a sick pig. Any way you try spinning it, the latest job numbers are disastrous for Democrats desperate to hold on to power in next month's elections. Take the rosiest spin possible out of the White House. "Today's employment report shows that private-sector payrolls increased by 64,000 in September, continuing nine consecutive months of private-sector job growth," Obama's chief...

A day after President Obama declared that his administration is not “some academic exercise,” Lawrence Summers announced plans to step down as director of the president’s National Economic Council and return to Harvard University. Christina Romer just left her post as head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers to go back to the University of California, Berkeley. The current administration has suffered from a historic lack of private-sector experience,

According to Keynesian economists, government hiring stimulates the private sector during a recession because government employees go out and spend much of their paychecks in the private sector, and extra demand is exactly what the private sector needs during a recession. But this year’s experience with census hiring contradicts that view. Keynesians acknowledge that, someday, the private sector will pay taxes to finance the salaries and benefits of government employees, but this cost is said to be offset by the additional demand for goods and services produced in the private sector, which have those government employees as their customers.

I doubt you'll see this headline anywhere else. But that's how many new private sector jobs have been added so far this year, according to the household survey of employment. The household survey has a strong tendency to lead the establishment survey, especially in the years following the end of a recession. That's because it is based on a random telephone survey of households, whereas the establishment survey relies on sending a questionnaire to known businesses. So the household survey is more likely to pick up the newly self-employed and those employed by new startups that have not been...

Out of work? Behind on your bills? Defaulting on your mortgage, maybe? If so, you no doubt did not hold a government job before getting canned. Some 2½ years after the start of the recession, the evidence is now clear: The private-sector economy took a severe blow -- but public-sector workers were spared. In fact, their numbers actually grew, albeit slightly. This stark picture clearly reflects upside-down priorities -- particularly if officials care about boosting the truly productive parts of the economy. Start with a few telling statistics: From January 2008 to January 2010, private-sector jobs plunged from 115.5 million...

According to a Library of Congress survey,  Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, may be second to the Bible as the most influential book read in America.  It is required reading in management training at BB&T, the 12th largest bank in the U.S. and one that resisted taking TARP bailout funds.Since President Obama took office, Atlas Shrugged has been making a renaissance with rising sales and library waiting lists, partly because it explains our current economic woes more straightforwardly than most of what we hear from today’s experts.What happened in Rand’s narrative is coming to pass today, with the public sector...

One of the biggest obstacles to job growth may actually surprise most Americans: as fast as the private sector is creating jobs, the government is shedding them. And the cuts are far from over. Despite all the gloom and doom about the US economy, the private sector actually created 620,000 jobs over the past seven months, far faster than in the previous two recessions. The private sector is adding jobs now—that's good--because a year ago we were sliding toward oblivion,' says Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. The problem, economists say, is that the pace of hiring...

I Don't have the heart to break any more bad news to President Obama. So, if you happen to have his phone number, please deliver this message: Go easy on the upbeat chatter about the number of jobs being created by private companies. Your information is inaccurate. The president, I'm sorry to say, is starting to look very foolish. It's presumptuous of me, I know, to think that this president, or any politician, for that matter, really cares about telling the truth. But just in case, here's the hole that Mr. Obama is digging himself into. Soon after another awful...

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Companies hired more workers in July but the gains are too slow to reduce unemployment and spur the economy significantly, reports showed on Wednesday. The reports come two days before the government's more comprehensive jobs reading for the month and illustrate that while the economy's improving, the jobs market has a long way to go. U.S. private employers added 42,000 jobs in July, payrolls processor ADP Employer Services reported, slightly more than economists forecast but still a tepid figure. Separately, the Institute for Supply Management reported increased growth in the services sector in July, while its...

Private sector employment rose slightly more than expected in July, easing some concerns about labor market weakness ahead of a key government jobs report later this week. Private employers added 42,000 jobs in July, compared with a revised gain of 19,000 in June, the report by a payrolls processor ADP Employer Services showed on Wednesday. The rise in hiring was slightly higher than an estimate from economists surveyed by Reuters for a gain of 40,000 private-sector jobs. The June ADP figure originally was reported as a gain of 13,000 jobs. However, while above market expectations the gains still show the...

Now he tells us. He's been reading Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman instead of playing golf and shooting hoops, as reported by the press. While no one was looking, he's been downloading podcasts of the Glenn Beck show and checking out heritage.org on his iPad. He's a born-again free-marketer, supply-sider, and friend of business large and small. That's the freely translated gist of President Obama's July 9 speech at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Who would have known it? It is Obama who, as he "said in the campaign" and as he "repeated many times as President," thinks...

Want a 22 percent raise with zero risk of being let go? Get a federal job. A just-released report from Heritage Foundation scholar James Sherk reveals that times have never been better for civilian employees of Uncle Sam. To wit: Federal employees enjoy salaries 22 percent higher than folks in the private sector with comparable qualifications and job descriptions -- 30 to 40 percent higher when you factor in extra-generous fringe benefits. Plus, civil-service protections make it almost impossible to be fired. Nice work if you can get it, right? Actually, the federal government seems to be the only employer...

Where are the jobs, Barry?New York Times: The United States added just 83,000 private-sector jobs in June, a dishearteningly low number that could add to the growing number of economists who warn that the economic recovery is stalling. Over all, the nation lost 125,000 jobs, , according to the monthly snapshot of the job market released by the Labor Department on Friday. Most of the lost jobs came as temporary workers hired by the federal government to help with the census exited their jobs.The unemployment rate, based on a different survey, declined to 9.5 percent in June from the...

We Americans needed this weekend, with something to celebrate -- our independence from overseas oppressors. Indeed, the Tea Party movement is attempting to recapture the attitude of our nation’s founders toward overweening government, in this case our own. The distance from Washington to Main Street is not as great as that from Boston Harbor to the Palace of Westminster, but it is great indeed. Most Americans want to see spending reined in and taxes cut. But when the manager of a custard stand in Milwaukee suggested to Vice President Joe Biden that he would prefer lower taxes to payment for...

The Office of Management and Budget reports that total federal revenue more than doubled every decade from 1940 to 1980 (Table 1.3, tables). And from 1980 to 2000, total federal revenue almost doubled every decade, going from $517 billion in 1980 to $1.032 trillion in 1990 to $2.025 trillion in 2000. But in 2010, OMB estimates that total revenue will be only an anemic $2.165 trillion. If the current decade had kept pace with the last two decades, the feds would have receipts in 2010 of $4 trillion. That's more than enough to balance the budget. But the above numbers...

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-obama-and-president-medvedev-russia-us-russia-business-summit Home • Briefing Room • Speeches & Remarks The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release June 24, 2010 Remarks by President Obama and President Medvedev of Russia at the U.S.-Russia Business Summit U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Washington, D.C. 3:08 P.M. EDT PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, good afternoon, everybody. It is a pleasure to be here with my friend and partner, President Medvedev, and I want to thank him again for his leadership, especially his vision for an innovative Russia that’s modernizing its economy, including deeper economic ties between our...