The chart below (found also here), from Big Government contributor Veronique de Rugy clearly shows that federal employment has grown by 98,000 jobs since the start of the recession. This bears repeating, because lefty columnist Paul Krugman is furiously spinning that the increase in employment is due to Census hiring. Krugman:

But anyone paying attention knew why public employment had risen — and it had nothing to do with Big Government. It was, instead, the fact that the federal government had to hire a lot of temporary workers to carry out the 2010 Census — workers who have almost all left the payroll now that the Census is done.

Um, no.

(more…)

The item by Publius, “Census Workers Blow Whistle on Hiring Fraud“, actually reminds us of one of the Obama administration’s related scams, the “green jobs” industry. That is something that sounds a little weedy but is really quite simple, a failure to homogenize the data. This practice is employed in order to make soaring claims of jobs “created” from taking taxpayer money and mandating something politically desired. The truth is that the jobs (briefly) created are a fraction of the number claimed.

Consider what we have uncovered in the latter, which I detail in Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America in a discussion that reminds us as well how “green jobs” even more closely resemble census (and of course “stimulus”) jobs in that they are temporary jobs, “bubble” jobs existing only so long as the government (taxpayer) transfer of wealth continues:

“But the most glaring similarity [between 'green jobs' and 'stimulus jobs'], and indeed feature of ‘green jobs’ is that they are temporary. Before you find comfort in this, recall that the unions don’t stand for such notions, and the enactment of green jobs schemes ensures further infusions of taxpayer money into the bubble to make the make-work permanent.

We saw how some jobs supposedly created under the ’stimulus’ actually reflected funding of a position that lasted, in some cases, only a week. The reason you hear of enormous numbers of projected jobs is because those pushing them do not ‘homogenize the data.’ Homogenizing, or harmonizing, the claimed green jobs figures annualizes them, translating the thousands of days-, weeks- or months-long gigs (i.e., ‘jobs created’) into the equivalent of fulltime jobs. So a sexy claim of half a million jobs, which are sixty-day installation contracts, is homogenized at around 75,000 ‘jobs created.’

(more…)

From the Associated Press:

A wave of census hiring lifted payrolls by 431,000 in May, but job creation by private companies grew at the slowest pace since the start of the year. The unemployment rate dipped to 9.7 percent as people gave up searching for work.

The Labor Department’s new employment snapshot released Friday suggested that outside of the burst of hiring of temporary census workers by the federal government many private employers are wary of bulking up their work forces.

That indicates the economic recovery may not bring relief fast enough for millions of Americans who are unemployed.

Virtually all the job creation in May came from the hiring of 411,000 census workers. Such hiring peaked in May and will begin tailing off in June.

By contrast, hiring by private employers, the backbone of the economy, slowed sharply. They added just 41,000 jobs, down from 218,000 in April and the fewest since January.

The unemployment rate, which is derived from a separate survey than the payroll figures, fell to 9.7 percent from 9.9 percent. The dip partly reflected 322,000 people leaving the labor force for a variety of reasons.

All told, 15 million people were unemployed in May.

Counting people who have given up looking for work and part-timers who would rather be working full time, the “underemployment” rate fell to 16.6 percent in May from 17.1 percent in April. Even with the drop, the high underemployment figure shows how difficult it is for jobseekers to find work.

Employers across a range of industries last month added jobs at a slower pace—or cut them. Factories, professional and business services, leisure and hospitality companies, and education and health care firms all slowed hiring. Financial services, construction companies and retailers all pared jobs. Government, however, led the way in hiring, adding a whopping 390,000 positions last month.

Continue reading here. Keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of those government jobs are temporary.

From ABC News:

The conservative filmmaker arrested this year for an undercover attempt to tape staffers at a U.S. senator’s office said his next target — the Census Bureau — is another example of government waste.

James O’Keefe, fresh off sentencing for his role in the attempted sting on Sen. Mary Landrieu’s Louisiana office in January, signed up to work for the Census in hopes of exposing what he alleges is the bureau’s waste of taxpayer money.

O’Keefe said in an exclusive interview today with “Good Morning America” that he has no plans to stop his undercover operations.

“You’re on notice…if you are doing things behind closed doors, we will find you and we will film you,” O’Keefe said.

(more…)

Just when we thought flag@whitehouse.gov–which appears to be alive and well when clicked–was scary and invasive–it seems the Obama administration’s Census Bureau has outdone itself.  A US census worker, driving a metallic gray Ford Taurus-type car, has been reported to be combing through the Memphis, TN suburb of Germantown knocking on doors asking people for information on their neighbors.

Yes, you read that correctly. The US census worker was asking how many people lived in the house next door on or about April 1, 2010. As if there wasn’t enough controversy with the census already, this just adds fuel to the fire.

According to the source, here’s what happened when Obama’s Orwellian Big Brother knocked:

The census worker identified himself, showed his credentials, and continued to ask if she knew if the house next door was occupied on April 1 of this year.  The census worker also indicated that he had “difficulty” contacting the neighbors.  After the source confirmed the house was occupied on April 1st, the census worker continued by asking, “How many people occupied that house?”

My source responded by saying, “If they haven’t filled out their census, I can’t help you and I have no intention of telling you anything about my neighbors and your recourse is to enforce your penalties.”

The worker replied, “Well you know why we take the census don’t you?”

My source replied, “Yes, in this case, to redistribute my wealth.  And you are not permitted to ask me about my neighbors.”

The worker went on to say that the census is used to figure out the number of representatives and federal monies that would be allocated.  The source still refused to answer and the census worker was asked to leave the property.

He then proceeded to knock on the other neighbor’s doors, apparently, to get the information he was sent our for.  Let’s just hope that these people are not attorneys because this is a clear violation of the privacy and security procedures of the census to ensure an accurate and secure count.  Nowhere in this information does it say your neighbors can provide census information.

(more…)

On Tuesday, May 4, 2010, the Director of the U.S. Census Bureau sent a welcome memo addressed to the part-time workers his agency had allegedly hired to complete the 2010 Census.  He referred the memo to his “600,000 new colleagues,” whom he called “the heart of the operations for the second half of the census” and “the face of the US Federal government.”

On Friday, May 7, the U.S. Department of Labor released its latest official monthly jobs report, which noted that “Federal government employment was up in April, reflecting the hiring of 66,000 temporary workers for the decennial census.”  This followed prior DOL reports of Census hiring in March(48,000), February(15,000), and January(9,000). Even if all those “temporary” Census workers hired as early as January were still on the job on May 4 when the Director sent his“welcome” note, the official data through April suggests the Census Bureau has hired 138,000 temporary workers this year, not 600,000.

Where are the other 462,000?

(more…)