wisconsin this year is where republicans are getting all their ideas. you want us to hire more government workers, he says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. didn t he get the message, the american people did, it s time to cut back on government. i think at the national level, we can learn a lot from this guy, you know that? this guy, republican governor scott walker of wisconsin. the message of wisconsin, according to the republican party s presidential nominee this year is it s time to cut firemen and policemen and teachers. that s the message of wisconsin. and he says the message of whisk wiv is now the national message for the republican party. here s the thing, though, if the big republican idea this year is cutting firefighters and teachers and police officers, it s shrinking the public sector, firing people with public sector jobs. we re already doing that now,
wisconsin? joining us now for the interview is paul krugman, nobel prize-winning economist, new york times columnist, and the author most recently of end this depression now! and he does mean depression. paul krugman, thank you for being here. good to be on. government jobs are real jobs, obviously. i do not think of them as a huge proportion of the overall american economy. how much of a difference could it really make to the overall economy, the overall unemployment picture if we just hadn t lost all the public sector jobs? okay, the right comparison is if we had normal job growth in the public sector, which is roughly with population. so, which is what happened more or less under george w. bush. so if we d had that kind of job growth instead of actually laying off 600,000 public employees, we d have an unemployment rate that was about 1 percentage point lower, just directly from those jobs. we d be at something like 7% unemployment, and that s even counting the indirect
i think at the national level, we can learn a lot from this guy, you know that? this guy, republican governor scott walker of wisconsin. the message of wisconsin, according to the republican party s presidential nominee this year is it s time to cut firemen and policemen and teachers. that s the message of wisconsin. and he says the message of whisk wiv is now the national message for the republican party. here s the thing, though, if the big republican idea this year is cutting firefighters and teachers and police officers, it s shrinking the public sector, firing people with public sector jobs. we re already doing that now, and it s not helping. this is a chart of public sector jobs in the last four recessions. we have organized the recessions by president. so what s the difference between the current fragile recovery from this current recession? and the better recovery from the previous three recessions? well, first of all, this recession was worse, but second
right now, public sector employment doesn t crowd out private sector employment, it s reversed. slashing those jobs is making our economy worse. this is not the time i think it s a stupid argument to say we need fewer schoolteachers, but for sure this is a really bad time to be laying them off. even if we didn t have enough, this might be a good time for some extras. that s right. and, by the way, the president also did say, you know, what about the potholes, which are proliferating, certainly, all over my state of new jersey. what about construction? what about repair? what about all this public spending we ve been cutting at exactly the time it should be increasing instead? paul krugman, princeton professor, new york times columnist, author of end this depression now! thank you for being here. a big election update coming up next.
and it s not helping. this is a chart of public sector jobs in the last four recessions. we have organized the recessions by president. so what s the difference between the current fragile recovery from this current recession? and the better recovery from the previous three recessions? well, first of all, this recession was worse, but second of all, in the previous three recessions, policymakers let public sector employment keep growing, which frankly helped with the recovery. president obama has proposed doing that this time, too, with his jobs act, right, but republicans in congress have said no along with some conservative democrats, so in trying to recover from this recession, we have been doing something differently than we did in previous ones. in trying to recover from this recession, we have been hampered by a public sector that is still firing people. cops and teachers and firefighters. we have been trying to recover from a recession while firing people in the public sector al