Census Bureau reports slight drop in state, local employment
The Census Bureau’s latest (2011) survey of government employment and payroll shows that as of March 2011, there were 16.4 million full-time equivalent employees working in state and local governments in the U.S., down 1.4 percent from 2010. The majority of the employees (8.9 million) worked in education, followed by those working in hospitals (964,381), police protection (923,951) and corrections (717,940).
Local governments ─ which include counties, cities, townships, special districts and school districts ─ accounted for 12.0 million full-time equivalent employees in 2011, down 204,781 in full-time equivalent employees from 2010.
State governments employed 4.4 million full-time equivalent employees in 2011, down 0.4 percent from 2010. Education accounted for the largest percentage of state government employment in the nation, with 1.8 million full-time equivalent employees (42.4 percent).
Get more data from the survey at this Census Bureau site.
