Survey Reveals % of Gov't Workers in Each State

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http://blogs.sacbee.com/the_state_worker/2012/02/survey-nearly-6-percent-of-california-workers-employed-by-state.html

Worst 5
-----------
Hawaii 3.0/10
Alaska 3.0/10
Maryland 2.5/10
Virginia 2.4/10
New Mexico 2.3/10

Best 5
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Pennsylvania 1.2/10
Michigan 1.2/10
Vermont 1.2/10
Missouri 1.3/10
Indiana 1.3/10

* New Hampshire 1.4/10

I wonder if that 1.3 for IN is a new trend for it.

NH has the most decentralized government in the US. Unfortunately, NH doesn't have the smallest government, at least when it comes to state and local government workers.

Interesting breakdown, Greenhorn.

It's also useful to note that a lot of those local workers in many towns may be minor positions with only a few hours of work per year, and some small (often in the hundreds, but maybe up to a few thousand dollars).

According to the state, there are:
619,700 total (nonfarm) workers
7,200 Federal government workers (1.162%)(actually bumps NH to first, compared to Gallup)
21,900 State government workers (3.534%)(NH is really first, by this figure, since it makes no sense to talk about "state workers" in DC)
63,400 Local government workers (10.23%)(puts NH last, compared to Gallup)

Which puts NH lower in the first two categories than Gallup suggests, and higher in the Local category. Given the level of demonstrable error, there's no telling how much error also exists in the data for the other states, so the rankings should be taken with a large grain of salt. The fact that they have "state workers" listed for DC would imply that there's a good bit or error in their methodology. They also admit to weighting the numbers according to various factors, which may or may not distort things further. If one were going to weight it, weighting it by salary would seem to be more useful. How many "man-dollars" are expended on government, at each level?

Gallup may be looking at residents rather than employees, which would explain DC.

Quote from: JasonPSorens on February 29, 2012, 09:42:10 am

Gallup may be looking at residents rather than employees, which would explain DC.

It says, "workers," but they're likely getting "workers" who live in one place, but work in another. Plus, their sample size, per-state, is often not very large, and they're tossing in these weighting factors, so the whole things a bit of a mess...

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