by Ryan Meilstrup
The U.S. set another new record for the total number of government jobs in February, even as overall unemployment ticks up, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
The government added 52,000 positions in February, around the average gain per month seen in the last year, totaling 23,180,000, according to the BLS. The U.S. economy added 275,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in February, far higher than expectations of 200,000, but unemployment shot up from 3.7% to 3.9%.
The gain in government jobs matches the increase in January but is lower than the increase in December at 76,000, according to the report. Of the government jobs added in February, 9,000 were federal, 5,000 were in the states and 38,000 were in local governments.
The number of government jobs added in February was only outdone by the health care sector and leisure and hospitality, which added around 67,000 and 58,000 in the month, respectively, according to the report. The transportation and warehousing sector added nearly 20,000 and professional and business services added 9,000, while jobs in manufacturing declined by 4,000.
Almost one fifth of all jobs added in Feb were gov't – that's not a sustainable ratio since those gov't jobs have to be paid for out of taxes taken from private job holders, so you need many private jobs to sustain a single gov't job: pic.twitter.com/YAWRNeP9ur
— E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. (@RealEJAntoni) March 8, 2024
February is the fourth month in a row that the number of people employed by the government has hit a new record, beating out the old record that was achieved in May 2010 of 22,996,000 due to a surge in temporary hiring for census collection.
Amid the growing number of government jobs, federal debt has continued to climb, reaching over $34.44 trillion as of Wednesday, up from $34 trillion at the start of 2024, according to the Treasury Department. The federal debt increased by $800 billion in just the fourth quarter of 2023, despite gross domestic product growing by $328.7 billion in the quarter.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request to comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Ryan Meilstrup is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
