Now you might never know it to hear some of the political talk, but Iowa is not a state in which state government employment has grown.
Number of State Employees Has Remained Stable Over Time
Number of State Employees Per Thousand Iowans Has Held Steady
Both graphs above show that employment by state government has remained relatively stable. Note neither graph includes 2010 or 2011, which would indicate the more recent effects of a 10 percent across-the-board budget cut and early retirements. The second graph demonstrates that considering population growth, Iowa has seen a decline in state employment from the 1990s.
See “Getting Public Value Out of Our Public Dollars,” an October 2010 report from the Iowa Fiscal Partnership, at www.IowaFiscal.org.
Posted by Andrew Cannon, Research Associate
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