How public sector layoffs add to the racial income gap | MSNBC

How public sector layoffs add to the racial income gap | MSNBC: There have been better times to be a public sector worker. Over the past several years, government employees have been buffeted by across-the-board sequestration cuts, a years-long federal pay freeze, unpaid furloughs, benefit cuts and threats to the relative strength of their labor unions. But most of all, government employees have been deluged by pink slips.

 Aggressive budget-cutting in the aftermath of the recession has resulted in public sector layoffs on an unprecedented scale. By mid-2012, the public sector had shed more than 600,000 jobs, “the largest decrease in any sector since the recovery began in July 2009,” according to the Brookings Institution. The flood of terminations slowed to a trickle in 2013, but it didn’t stop entirely. And while the most recent jobs report offered some hope that public sector jobs may finally be coming back, it will be a long time before the government employs as many people as it did before the financial collapse.

“They were taking a meat cleaver” to public sector employment, said
William Rodgers, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University. And the result wasn’t just swelling unemployment or reduced government services: Mass firings in the public sector have also disproportionately affected black communities, inflaming America’s swollen racial income gap.