A recent jobs report from the U.S. Department of Labor shows that 2.1 million new jobs were created in the past year although nearly one-third of those were government jobs.
617,000 jobs were created in local, state and federal government. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, government employment in the month of May reached an all-time high of 23,319,000, which is up about 1.5 million since President Joe Biden took office.
Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning said the most striking of those numbers were the 1.1 million jobs created at the federal level under Biden.
"He's growing the jobs economy at least significantly by growing the size and the reach of the federal government and that's not what America signed up," said Manning.
About 15% of the country's workforce is made up of people working in local, state or federal government. Manning said there's been a significant shift in people moving out of the private sector and into a government entity. A shift, he says, that doesn't contribute well to the economy in the long run.
"People working in the private sector are meeting a supply and demand need in the economy," he said. "Government employees on the other hand are an artificially created need to some extent."
Manning added that a growing government workforce is not sustainable because the private sector has to pay for the government.
"Maybe it's time to start shrinking the growth of government so the private sector can expand," Manning said.