Just something I found interesting…
According to a new report released by the Wisconsin Budget Project, Wisconsin employs 12.5 state employees per 1,000 citizens, a number that puts Wisconsin 43rd among the 50 states.
H/T to Reasonable Citizen.
8 thoughts on “Wisconsin govt. employment lower than national average”
Comments are closed.
Silly Zach. Numbers are for liberals.
Where do we rank in COST? Is it still 43rd?
The report is interesting – but without a cost of living factor, the payroll numbers are almost meaningless. It’s like comparing income today vs. in 1960 without considering inflation. OK not quite that bad – but you get my point. Per capita income in Connecticut is $54k, it’s $36,800 here.
And I realize this is a press release style report – but at least a link to some data would be nice.
I wasn’t addressing costs; I was just reporting something I found interesting about the size of Wisconsin state government in contrast to other states. Lots of folks rail about “big government” and the need to reduce the size of state government, but these numbers seem pretty clear that when compared with the rest of the country, Wisconsin’s state govt. is actually pretty small.
No, they don’t. They make it look like that’s the case. And it might be. But absent the actual supporting data and some context, it’s just not so clear as you seem to think.
The degree to which states hire employees directly vs. contracting out the work has a HUGE impact on these numbers. Doesn’t mean it’s better or worse, that’s a separate issue. But it does matter if you want to compare.
Also, couldn’t help but notice you used the 43% state-only number. Which is fine – I’m sure it’s just a matter of you having more of a direct interest in that than the fact that the local and overall numbers just happen to look less rosy. But if you’re considering the true picture, you have to look at both. Do we have a better state only number in part, at the expense of local numbers. Are snowplow drivers in other states employees of the state while they’re largely county workers here? OK, bad example, I’m sure Florida doesn’t have a lot of snowplow drivers employed by anyone 🙂 but I think you can see my point.
Even if we expand the numbers out to include county and municipal employees, Wisconsin still ranks 38th out of the 50 states in public employees per 1,000 residents.
That still puts us in the bottom group of states when it comes to public employee employment.
Yup – as I said, it looks good. Now how much work does Wisconsin contract out? And how does that compare to other states? And the payroll per employee ranks in the top half at #21. Paying less people a little higher wage to get the same amount of work done might be good budget management. But does payroll include benefits and pension? Traditionally it might – but since they don’t include any of their data or assumptions, I don’t know. I don’t know much of anything about the “Wisconsin Budget Project, except that it’s “An initiative of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families” which receives some degree of funding for WEAC. Doesn’t make any of it untrue, WEAC might not have any influence on their “research” at all. But when data, sources and assumptions are left out, I get suspicious. And it’s not like WEAC is a disinterested, objective party on this.
At best, it’s interesting. Piques my interest. But I wouldn’t go around quoting their numbers with any confidence.
Efficacy is difficult to assess, too. Absent other data and information we must make a value judgement on what we have. I side with Zach on this that Wisconsin has good numbers and that is all we have at the moment to compare.