States and Towns Destroyed Half a Million Jobs in Three Years

"Since employment peaked in September 2008, local government has lost 550,000 jobs."

—Hooray, America got its smaller government! Of those jobs, 345,000 disappeared in a year. But let's not even get into these August employment numbers, just released. Why bother? It's a long-term trend, the not-working, and that's the way they ("they"!) want it.

It should perhaps however be noted that the August report does some serious correction on the June and July reports: "The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for June was revised from +46,000 to +20,000, and the change for July was revised from +117,000 to +85,000." So yeah, strike those 58,000 jobs that weren't created this summer from the permanent record. Happy Labor Day.