The June jobs report saw little change in the number of government jobs. But that means that a significant
public jobs gap is still not going anywhere:
One thing that has been historically unique about this recovery is the unprecedented loss of public sector jobs. The private sector began adding jobs in the spring of 2010, but the public sector continued shedding jobs until last summer. [...] We are currently 716,000 public sector jobs below where we were when the recovery started, but to keep up with population growth since then, we should have added over 800,000 jobs, so we are around 1.5 million public sector jobs down. About a third of them are teachers and other employees in public K-12 education.
Those are good jobs that supported middle-class families. They're also jobs that served the public. And their loss is part of a concerted Republican war on public workers, public services, and really, the idea of the public good.
Continue reading below the fold for more of the week's labor and education news.
A fair day's wage
- Oakland Raiders cheerleaders are going to be paid minimum wage after one filed a wage theft lawsuit:
Perhaps most interesting is that the cheerleaders will also be paid for work-related events such as practice, public appearances, and team photos; a wage and hour mandate that wasn’t previously imposed.
- Rhode Island Treasurer Gina Raimondo, an anti-worker Democrat currently running for governor, loves her some hedge funds.
- Another good move from the president:
Earlier this month, the White House announced that President Obama would sign an executive order protecting the employees of all federal contractors from discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity. At the White House’s annual LGBT Pride Month reception Monday evening, Obama announced a separate executive order he’s planning to sign that will similarly protect all transgender employees of the federal government.
- Union-made-in-America wines.
- Media Matters goes union.
Education