{"id":13703,"date":"2015-01-14T14:01:33","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T19:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/%year%\/%monthnum%\/%day%\/job-shifts-under-obama-fewer-government-workers-more-caregivers-servers-and-temps\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T03:20:24","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T08:20:24","slug":"job-shifts-under-obama-fewer-government-workers-more-caregivers-servers-and-temps","status":"publish","type":"short-read","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2015\/01\/14\/job-shifts-under-obama-fewer-government-workers-more-caregivers-servers-and-temps\/","title":{"rendered":"Job shifts under Obama: Fewer government workers, more caregivers, servers and temps"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With the unemployment rate down to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bls.gov\/news.release\/empsit.nr0.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">5.6% as of December<\/a>\u00a0(the lowest since mid-2008), Americans are at long last feeling better about the economy. According to a <a href=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/politics\/2015\/01\/14\/obama-job-rating-ticks-higher-views-of-nations-economy-turn-more-positive\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">new Pew Research Center report<\/a>, 27% of U.S. adults\u00a0say economic conditions are excellent or good, about twice the percentage who said that at the beginning of 2014. 31% expect the economy to be better a year from now, versus 17% who expect it to be worse, and for the first time in five years, more Americans say President Obama\u2019s economic policies have made conditions better (38%) than worse (28%).<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With Obama likely to discuss\u00a0the improving economy in his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.presidency.ucsb.edu\/sou.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">State of the Union address<\/a>\u00a0next week, we decided to compare the latest payroll figures with the data\u00a0from January 2009, to get a sense of how the nation&#8217;s employment structure has changed since Obama took office.<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2015\/01\/jobsSector.png\"><img data-dominant-color=\"e5e3e2\" data-has-transparency=\"false\" style=\"--dominant-color: #e5e3e2;\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"420\" height=\"385\"  srcset=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2015\/01\/jobsSector.png?resize=420,385 420w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 480px, (max-width: 782px) 782px, 640px\" class=\"wp-image-25545 not-transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2015\/01\/jobsSector.png\" alt=\"jobsSector\" ><\/a><\/figure>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The takeaway: An overall gain of 6.4 million more non-farm payroll jobs last month than in January 2009, which represents a 4.8% increase. All of that growth came from the private sector, while the public sector shrunk: Private payrolls have added 7 million jobs over Obama&#8217;s presidency, while government payrolls (federal, state and local) have contracted by a combined 634,000 jobs.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><!--more--><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Specifically, it&#8217;s\u00a0the service sector that&#8217;s been generating jobs &#8212; nearly 7.6 million new ones since January 2009. But more than half of\u00a0those jobs are in just three sectors:<\/p>\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Nearly 1.5 million jobs were created in the <strong>healthcare<\/strong> sector, which now accounts for 11.1% of all payroll jobs in the country (up from 10% at the start of 2009). That continues a trend of steady growth that dates back to at least 1990, well before the Affordable Care Act: Healthcare now employs 14.9 million Americans, versus about 13.4 million six years ago &#8212; an 11% growth rate over that period.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Bars, restaurants and other food-service<\/strong> employers have added almost 1.4 million jobs since the start of Obama&#8217;s presidency, for total growth of 14.6%. More than 10.8 million people now work in that industry, 7.7% of all payroll jobs.<\/li>\n<li>More than a million of the newly created jobs are at <strong>temporary-help agencies<\/strong>, which now account for 2% of all payroll jobs in the country. The industry&#8217;s total employment was just under 3 million in December, versus 1.96 million at the start of 2009 &#8212; an overall 52.5% growth rate.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A handful of thriving goods-producing industries\u00a0have gotten a lot of attention, but they don&#8217;t employ all that many people.\u00a0Payrolls of\u00a0oil and gas producers, for instance, have jumped nearly 31%, reflecting the surge in domestic production; still, that&#8217;s just 216,100 jobs in total. And automakers, who benefited from massive government aid during the depths of the Great Recession, have added 192,700 jobs (28%) since January 2009; they now employ 884,000 people.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, autos were among the few manufacturers to buck that sector&#8217;s downward trend. Overall, manufacturing is\u00a0321,000 payroll jobs below where it was when Obama took office (although the sector has added 786,000 jobs since bottoming out in early 2010).<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Construction, another goods-producing sector,\u00a0is still down 401,000 jobs from where it stood at the start of 2009 &#8212; which, in turn, was 15% below its peak payroll in April 2006, shortly before the air began leaking out of the housing bubble. Construction continued to shed jobs well into\u00a0Obama&#8217;s first term, bottoming out in January 2011; the sector&#8217;s growth since then, while a relatively robust 13.5%, has only been enough to bring payrolls back to where they were in the spring of 2009.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Government payrolls at nearly all levels also have been cut. Local governments have shed 446,000 jobs, about 3% of their total workforce; state governments have cut a net 121,000 jobs, with small growth in education more than offset by cuts elsewhere. And while the federal government has added 62,700 non-postal jobs, the Postal Service has reduced its workforce nearly 18%, or 129,400 jobs. The Postal Service now employs fewer than 600,000 people, its smallest payroll\u00a0since 1964.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The healthcare industry, food and drink establishments and temp services have driven most of the jobs growth since Barack Obama took office nearly six years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"sub_headline":null,"sub_title":"","_crdt_document":"","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"relatedPosts":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0,"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"bylines":[{"key":"b4c479ea6e9e1e003b72aecd3177ad30","termId":842}],"acknowledgements":[],"displayBylines":true,"footnotes":"","prc_watchers":[]},"categories":[75,234,232],"bylines":[842],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[467],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[515],"research-teams":[521,525,529,526,527,528,522,520,523,517,518,519],"workflow-status":[],"class_list":["post-13703","short-read","type-short-read","status-publish","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-business-workplace","category-economic-conditions","bylines-drew-desilver","formats-short-read","regions-countries-united-states","research-teams-data-labs","research-teams-global","research-teams-global-migration-and-demography","research-teams-internet","research-teams-journalism","research-teams-methods","research-teams-pew-research-center","research-teams-politics","research-teams-race-and-ethnicity","research-teams-religion","research-teams-science","research-teams-social-trends"],"label":"Short 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