That’s because when the entire country is hurting and the private sector continues to lose jobs, bureaucrats are being hired.

The following chart makes that case. Since the beginning of the recession (roughly January 2008), some 7.9 million jobs were lost in the private sector while 590,000 jobs were gained in the public one.  And since the passage of the stimulus bill (February 2009), over 2.6 million private jobs were lost, but the government workforce grew by 400,000.

Plus, as you know, according to the latest numbers from Bureau of Economic Analysis, the average federal civilian worker now earns double what private-sector workers earn when factoring in wages and benefits ($119,982 vs. $59,909). And the gap is increasing.  According to Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute, in 2000, the average federal worker earned 66 percent more in total compensation than the average private-sector worker. By 2008, that ratio had risen to 100 percent. That’s serious money.

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There are two distinct sectors in the economy: the private sector and the government sector.  The private sector is the productive part of the economy.  Competition in the private sector promotes greater efficiency, productivity and innovation than the public, or government, sector is capable of.  Yet it is government employees who are the highest paid and have the most job security.  This helps explain why so many states are facing acute, budgetary crises.

A new report by Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute highlights the sharp disparity between public and private compensation.  Despite producing very little compared to their private counterparts, public sector employees of state and local governments averaged 45 percent more per hour in wages and benefits.  And because government never shrinks, public employees are “rarely terminated for cost-cutting or job performance reasons.”

\Unionization appears to be a factor in public sector pay.  With a few exceptions, Edwards shows that the states with the highest public pay advantage also have the highest share of union workers.  But whatever the cause may be, the excessive pension plans provided by states has placed taxpayers in a virtual stranglehold.  Unless cuts are made, they are the ones who will have to pony up to provide for public sector workers.

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Remember the good old days, when the federal government was, shall we say, smaller? And by “smaller,” I mean half the size it is today.

Well you should, because that was only nine years ago.

Economist Chris Edwards ran the numbers, and found that since 2000, the federal government’s budget has doubled, from $1.79 trillion to an estimated $3.65 trillion today. Much of that can be contributed to former president Bush’s giant spending programs and the increase in defense spending to pay for the wars, but the largest upswing occurred just in the past year.

In 2009, the federal budget exploded from $2.98 trillion to an estimated $3.65 trillion, which would be the largest one-year leap in nearly 60 years when adjusted for inflation.

DownsizingGovernment.com has all the details, including a breakdown of federal spending by each federal department. It might even make you pine for those “old days.”