What is the EMPLOYMENT rate? (how many people actually HAVE private sector jobs?

[Filthy Keynes]

We hear so much about the UNEMPLOYMENT RATE, well.... how about the EMPLOYMENT rate? How many people in America actually HAVE private sector jobs (non government jobs)?

Anybody know?

[Ponce]

Being a wise guy I would say 3/4 for the government and the rest private.

[Fullpower]

my wild ass guess is that maybe 8 or nine percent of the population is engaged in MINING, Manufacturing, Construction,Transportation and AGRICULTURE.
That productive core would be the HOST, which is obviously greatly outnumbered by the parasitic supermajority.

[Filthy Keynes]

my wild ass guess is that maybe 8 or nine percent of the population is engaged in MINING, Manufacturing, Construction,Transportation and AGRICULTURE.
That productive core would be the HOST, which is obviously greatly outnumbered by the parasitic supermajority.


That's the sort of thing I'm looking for. Is there data on this? How many John Galts are there?

[vacuum]

What about engineers and scientists? I wouldn't really say they're "parasitic"...like retail stores or restaurants for example.

[SLV^GLD]

I am still employed by a privately held construction firm.
Times are very tight, we have watched our competition go down in flames.
We've laid off over 50% of our employees.
Commercial development has mostly dried up, government development is exploding. The contracts that are available are fiercely bid on with practically zero fee. People are working to stay alive as a business not necessarily for profit anymore.

Diversity mandates from the government, especially on those now proliferating government contracts, punish efficiency and merit and unfairly prop up and reward non-competitive overpricing for lower quality work.

There is still reward and opportunity for the truly motivated and productive; I recently was promoted to take on the adoption of an emerging technological paradigm shift in design and construction workflow called Building Information Modeling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_Information_Modeling).

The true blue private sector is barely hanging in there.

[JFN111]

We hear so much about the UNEMPLOYMENT RATE, well.... how about the EMPLOYMENT rate? How many people in America actually HAVE private sector jobs (non government jobs)?

Anybody know?

Doing a little internet seacrching the current estimate is 21.9 million people work for State, Local and the Federal Gov.
There is about 226 million people in the US over the age of 18. There is about 37 million over the age of 65 which leaves about 165 million in the potential workforce.
Figuring a real unemployment rate of around 18% that would leave about 139 million in the workforce.
Maybe throw another 10% out for people who can't or won't work and you have a labor force of around 149 million
Simple math would say around 15% work for the Gov. ::)

[palani]

100% of all employed people are working for the government. 100% of all welfare and unemployed people are paid by the government. The economy is OWNED by the government. Why do you think they study it so frequently. It belongs to them.

How do I know this? An easy mathematical exercise. It requires you find the budget of your city, county, state and federal (posing as national) government. It requires you find the population of your city, county, state and nation. It requires you divide the budget of each government entity by the population it serves to get a per capita cost for each entity. Next you add up each of these four figures (might only be three if you don't live in a city). This gets you the per capita cost for government as a whole.

Expect most people to fund government at $14,000 each or for a family of four around $56,000 annually. On an average basis how many families bring in $56,000 annually total? Remember this does not include cost of housing, food, car, clothing, education, toys, etc. This is just what government requires to provide their services.

Folks, there are no private sector jobs. Everyone is a public servant.

Enjoy!