Austerity Is Already Here, and It's Killing the Recovery

State and local government spending has already declined over the past 18 months, dampening growth and hiring

600 cali capital REUTERS Max Whittaker.jpg

As Congress bickers over how to cut the deficit, some economists warn that cuts too deep too soon would endanger the recovery. Unfortunately, spending has already declined on the state and local government levels. As a result, we're seeing weaker results in the two economic indicators that matter the most: hiring and economic growth. Without the headwind created by the state and local governments, the recovery would look significantly stronger.

First, let's be clear what we're talking about here. The objection is not that state and local governments should have done more to stimulate the economy than they had in, say, 2009. The criticism is that if they hadn't done less, then the economic recovery would be on firmer footing.

A Recovery With 326,000 More Jobs

In March 2010, the U.S. economy finally began to add jobs again. Every month since then, private sector employment has grown. Yet almost every month since then, state and local governments have cut jobs. Without those layoffs, the U.S. labor market would have 326,000 more people employed through May 2011. Here's a chart showing job growth with and without the impact of state and local government cuts:

You can see that the jobs picture looks better if you exclude the effect of state and local government layoffs. The only real outlier was October 2010, when state and local governments added 31,000 jobs. If no government jobs had been shed since March 2010, the unemployment rate in May would have been 8.8% instead of 9.1%. That might not seem like a huge change, but surely there would be some positive benefit to consumer sentiment if the headline rate was below 9% at this time, instead of having ticked back above it over the past few months. Moreover, those 326,000 more people who would still have jobs would have spent more money to stimulate the economy.

A Recovery with $8.8 Billion More GDP

The negative impact of state and local government austerity isn't limited to employment: it has also affected GDP over the past year, and especially over the past two quarters. Since the fourth quarter of 2009, state and local spending has dropped by $8.8 billion. If state and local government spending had remained constant over these five quarters, here's how GDP growth would have looked compared to actual experience:

How much better would we feel about the U.S. economy having grown by 3.4% and 2.4% over the past two quarters instead of 3.1% and 1.9%? This change would have both tangible and intangible positive effects on the economy. Not only would there have been more money spent to stimulate the economy, but sentiment would be a little higher, as growth would be looking a little bit better.

A Taste of What's to Come?

Remember, all of these benefits to the economy would have come merely if state and local governments didn't cut jobs or spending -- not if they had hired or had increased spending compared to 2009 levels. To be sure, budget troubles are forcing state and local austerity, but if the federal government were able to stop their bleeding, then the recovery would be proceeding with greater strength. The additional money and jobs in the economy would help to stimulate a higher rate of growth going forward as well, which means we'll miss the impact of this lost economic activity in quarters to come as well.

There's a strange sort of silver lining here, however. This analysis shows that the private sector is actually doing relatively better than the overall numbers we've been seeing suggests. If things would look better absent state and local governments, then the picture of just the private sector plus the federal government must look better than what we've been seeing. Unfortunately, this revelation will do little to make consumers more confident: all they read are reports of weak hiring and weak economic growth, since the impact of state and local government is included.

If this analysis isn't bad enough news for the recovery, the federal government might be gearing up to also begin cutting back. The U.S. has a long-term deficit problem, but the short-term consequences to a fragile economy outweigh the benefits of cutting the deficit in the short-term. If Washington needs proof of that, it only needs to look at how state and local government austerity has already stunted the recovery.

Image Credit: REUTERS/Max Whittaker

About the Author

Daniel Indiviglio was an associate editor at The Atlantic from 2009 through 2011. He is now the Washington, D.C.-based columnist for Reuters Breakingviews. He is also a 2011 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow through the Phillips Foundation.

Twitter

A Washington Post report on 2016 election interference raises the question: What could Obama have done differently?

If there is one thing The Washington Post’s story on the Obama administration’s anemic response to Russian meddling in the 2016 election makes clear, it’s that it took two to make the meddling effective.

There is a reason the tactics Russia used on the American elections—which are similar to things they’ve done in former Soviet republics and in Europe—are referred to as “asymmetric warfare”: They embody the art of leverage, of doing a lot with a little. As former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress in May, the Russians “succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and at minimal cost.” The whole operation, according to Clapper, cost a mere $200 million—a pittance in military spending terms. But the Russians used that money not the way a conventional army would, but the way a band of guerrillas would, feeling around for pressure points, and pressing—or not. Though, as Bloomberg reported this month, the Russians were clearly exploring ways to attack voting infrastructure in parts of the country, it still appears they ultimately decided not to pull the trigger, sticking instead with the hack-and-dump and the manufacturing of fake news. “It was ad hoc,” an Obama administration official told me shortly after the inauguration. “They were kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what would stick.”