More Students Seek Government Jobs; Even Big, Highly Profitable Corporations Now Offer Minimal Employee Benefits

More Students Seek Public Sector Work

If you’re looking for job security, benefits, and a decent salary, consider working for the federal government. President Obama’s stimulus plan will create 200,000 new jobs over the next three years. Monster has a good overview of stimulus jobs, including who's hiring, where the jobs will be, and the types of jobs available. - Alison Doyle, Stimulus Jobs: Alison's Job Searching Blog, About.com Guide to Job Searching, March 25, 2009

April 5, 2011

DailyWildcat.com - College graduates are increasingly looking for degree paths to prepare them for public sector work, but the end of federal stimulus funds is putting those positions in jeopardy.

The number of college graduates working for the federal government increased 16 percent from 2008 to 2009, according to an analysis of the American Community Survey from the U.S. Census Bureau. Employment in nonprofit organizations also increased by 11 percent during the same time period.

Brint Milward, director of the School of Government and Public Policy, said the number of students interested in majors that prepare them for positions in the public sector has risen since the school's split from the Eller College of Management in April 2009.

Milward said that the number of public administration undergraduates has increased by more than 200 in the last two years, from 305 to more than 500 today, and the number of political science majors has also increased from 900 to 1,200. The number of graduate students working toward a master's in public administration almost doubled over the same time period, from close to 50 two years ago to 96 today.

"There's no doubt that more people are asking for the major," Milward said. "Whether there are more opportunities, I don't know."

According to Bill Ruggirello, assistant director of UA Career Services, more private sector companies tend to try and reach out to students via career fairs.

"We have a couple of government types that come (to career fairs), but it in no way compares to the private groups," he said.

Ruggirello does not know yet if this trend continued this year. The annual career services survey to determine where students received employment will occur two weeks before graduation for students and about a month or two after graduation for employers.

He said that the job market has tightened in both the public and private sectors during the last couple of years, a factor Milward also addressed.

"The numbers sound right," he said in reference to the survey. "But it is important to note that, that is looking backward, not forward."

Out of the top five employers in Southern Arizona, four either are public sector companies or private companies that derive revenue from public funds. Raytheon is Southern Arizona's largest employer, followed by three public sector companies: the University of Arizona, the state of Arizona and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

The college class of 2011 is going into a job market with a starting salary higher than its recent predecessors, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit that connects career service departments to employers,.

"The Southern Arizona economy is dominated by the public sector," Milward said. "Would I rather work for the parks departments or work at Dillard's? I don't know. I've worked in universities and government and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I think it depends on that individual."

Milward said federal stimulus funds, which allowed local governments to retain workers in the last two years, will soon end and that will affect whether or not those same public sector opportunities will still be available.

"It's really striking to see how the public sector employs Arizonans," he said, "but demand in the market going forward, that's a little hard to predict."

Labor’s Decline Means Trouble for Workers

October 5, 2006

United Federation of Teachers - As labor unions have decreased in size and influence, American workers lost tremendous ground:

• 90 percent of Americans have lost real income since 1973
• 47 million — 16 percent of the population — have no health insurance
• 50 percent have no retirement security
• The top 1 percent of the population owns 75 percent of the wealth
• No developed nation has a wider gap between rich and poor

Even big, highly profitable employers now offer minimal employee benefits. The percentage of Americans with job-based health insurance has steadily declined from 63.6 in 2000 to 59.5 percent in 2005, even as health-insurance premiums rose at double-digit annual rates. Even profitable companies whose pension plans are in good financial shape — DuPont, Verizon and IBM to name a few — are slashing pension benefits.

The UFT and other public-employee unions are going to find it harder and harder to win public sympathy in their contract battles if their wages and benefits are better than those of most workers in private employ.

The labor movement’s decline has had a serious impact on community standards and public policy as well. In states where few workers are unionized, more people live in poverty, households earn less money, and more people have no health insurance. In these weak union states, governments spend less on education, unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation.

Why the link? Because in places where unions are strong, working people have a political voice.

The ongoing decline in union membership is making it tougher for the labor movement to execute a successful political program. Even when most union households vote for the worker-friendly candidate, their votes can’t swing elections simply because not enough people belong to union households. Consider the results of the 2005 presidential election, when labor had its best get-out-the-vote effort in a generation. John Kerry beat George Bush among union members by 32 percent, but he lost overall by 3 percent.

The current rate of organizing in this country is not even remotely close enough to reverse the decline in union membership. To catch up to where we were in 1981 at the time of Ronald Reagan’s defeat of the air traffic controllers’ strike, we would need to organize 10.7 million workers...

Teachers’ unions are a particularly choice target of anti-union forces since more than 80 percent of the nation’s more than 4 million teachers belongs to unions, making teaching the most highly unionized sector of the work force. The Bush administration seized upon Hurricane Katrina to reopen most of New Orleans public schools as non-unionized charter schools. And the Detroit teachers union made $63 million in concessions in September in the settlement that ended their 16-day strike...