Two reports released Wednesday show very different pictures of public sector job losses resulting from state budget cuts. One report, from Gov. Bev Perdue’s budget office, identified 825 North Carolina public education jobs lost during the current fiscal year; the other, from a coalition of left-leaning advocacy groups, claimed a loss of 16,472 public education jobs.

Meantime, the N.C. Division of Employment Security (known as the Employment Security Commission before Nov. 1) has reported a loss of about 8,000 jobs in state and local government since June.

Republicans and Democrats have been sniping at each other for months over the size and impact of public sector job reductions. Republicans and conservatives generally say that the public sector cuts are intended to right-size government and that very few employees actually will lose their jobs. Democrats and their liberal allies have said the job losses are massive and will lead to diminished public services.

The reports, coupled with data from DES, offer a variety of numbers to choose from. They can measure different aspects of the employment market. And in some cases, elected officials and interest groups may use one source to make a point that cannot be defended by the information they are citing.

David Brown, deputy budget officer of Perdue’s Office of State Budget & Management, presented a report to the General Assembly’s Joint Appropriations/Base Budget Committee Wednesday morning. The report found that 825 full-time-equivalent job losses have occurred in public schools, community colleges, and the UNC system. Overall, OSBM says 1,633 state government FTEs have lost jobs.

Also Wednesday, the left-leaning Together NC released a report titled “On the Chopping Block,” listing the number of “educator jobs” lost in each of the state’s seven economic development regions resulting from state budget cuts. Statewide, Together NC tallied up a loss of 16,472 state government jobs.

Budget office report

At Wednesday’s committee meeting, Brown explained that his report tracks employees paid from state appropriations who have been separated from service due to a reduction-in-force and have received severance payments. Brown explained that the report represented employees who lost their jobs and were not able to get other state jobs.

Senate Minority Leader Martin Nesbitt, D-Buncombe, said the severance report offered an incomplete view of the impact of budget cuts. A better place to look, he said, is the monthly ESC/DES reports. They have shown that approximately 20,000 government workers have lost their jobs since June, he said. “Through the Employment Security Commission you can get a much better picture than just on severance of active employees by state government,” he said. Rep. Mickey Michaux, D-Durham, also suggested ESC’s data would be a better indicator of job losses.

Sen. Tommy Tucker, R-Union, said he was happy to receive the information in Brown’s report. “We have heard outlandish numbers [of job losses] — 30,000, 40,000 people — that this budget was awful,” he said, “and I am glad to see that these numbers are comparable to the previous budget, and offer some clarity that it was not a wholesale bloodletting of employees.”

Tucker challenged the value to policymakers of the ESC reports, noting that supervision of the agency has been transferred to the state’s Department of Commerce. ESC “has now been deemed incompetent to a certain extent and … their numbers are somewhat skewed,” he said. Tucker then asked Brown, “But you are saying that these are the actual numbers that that the state budget office is having to deal with?” Brown answered yes.

As legislators prepared to adjourn the committee meeting, Michaux cautioned his colleagues against making “wild claims” about any numbers associated with state government layoffs. “I’ll avoid making wild claims if you will, Rep. Michaux,” responded Sen. Richard Stevens, R-Wake, the Senate’s chairman of the committee.

Carolina Journal asked Perdue about the job losses reported by her budget office. Here is her complete response:

Because of the General Assembly’s deep and unnecessary cuts, there are thousands fewer teachers and teachers’ assistants in our classrooms, there are thousands of eligible 4-year-olds who are not able to attend North Carolina’s nationally recognized early childhood education program, and the public universities have eliminated approximately 2,500 positions. OSBM’s report is not designed to reflect all of the harm that the General Assembly’s budget is doing to our schools, and it should not be relied on for that purpose. For instance, the report does not include all of the state employees — or all of the teachers — who were laid off, and it doesn’t reflect the positions that have been eliminated without an actual layoff. As the North Carolina School Boards Association said recently, “there is no doubt that public schools have significantly fewer adults per student to aid in the educational experience of that individual child.” The bottom line is this: the leaders of the General Assembly were simply wrong when they said that their budget cuts wouldn’t cause reductions in the classroom. Moreover, it’s clear that, unless addressed, the problem is going to get much worse next year when the federal EduJobs money — which has shielded us from the full impact of the legislature’s cuts — runs out.

Earlier this year, the governor made even more dire predictions about the impact of the GOP’s proposed budget. In April, at a Democratic fundraiser in Cary, Perdue predicted that the Republican budget, which allowed a temporary sales tax increase to expire, would result in 30,000 layoffs in state and local government, 18,000 in education alone.

“We are about to see the largest public layoff in North Carolina and maybe in American history,” she said.

Perdue’s initial budget included 10,000 government job cuts: 3,000 layoffs and the elimination of 7,000 vacant positions. She vetoed the budget passed by the General Assembly, and that veto was overridden. So far, state officials have been able to account for much lower job losses than the governor projected.

Together NC report

The NC Justice Center is a member of the coalition that released the Chopping Block report. CJ asked spokesman Jeff Shaw about the numbers in the budget office report presented to the legislative committee.

He said Brown’s report represents the number of state employees getting severance benefits right now. Because we are just 4½ months into the budget year, he expects those numbers to grow. The Chopping Block report is a projection of job losses over the 24-month period after the budget has taken effect.

Shaw also said the 1,633 FTE figure includes only layoffs. Under normal conditions, he said, normal turnover allows public schools and other agencies to eliminate jobs without laying people off.

In addition, Shaw said the OSBM number would exclude public school employees who are not paid directly with state funds, most likely including some people laid off due to the flex cuts mandated by the current budget, and “almost certainly excluding folks laid off as a result of the loss of federal Recovery Act [aka EduJobs] dollars that were not replaced with state dollars.”

DES numbers

The DES job counts are produced by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and released monthly. Many people consider the BLS/DES monthly employment and unemployment reports an accurate snapshot of the job market, but the reports often don’t match other employment counts, leaving government officials, reporters, and the public scratching their heads.

For instance, a report from the General Assembly’s Fiscal Research Division for December 2010 showed 322,564 FTE state employees and local public education positions in North Carolina. Job counts from BLS for the same month showed 424,800 people employed in state government and local public education.

BLS has a specific definition of a job that varies from the way other entities count jobs. Several state agencies, including the Department of Public Instruction and the UNC system, included vacant and unfilled positions along with layoffs and voluntary separations (including retirements) when they counted job losses since the budget passed. But BLS counts only people who are on the job each month and does not include unfilled positions in its job counts.

Many of the job losses claimed by critics of the Republican budget are reductions in unfilled positions, which may reflect a shrinking of overall job opportunities but does not represent people who had jobs and no longer are being paid.

According to the seasonally adjusted BLS data, the number of North Carolina state government employees actually increased from 183,400 in June to 186,800 in September. BLS/DES do not calculate a seasonally adjusted figure for public school employment, but total local government employment decreased over that period, from 429,400 in June to 418,000 in September. Overall, BLS estimates that the state lost about 8,000 jobs in state and local government from June to September, much less than the 20,000 Nesbitt claimed.

Not seasonally adjusted public school employment — an actual count of the number of people collecting checks that has not been modified by a seasonal estimating factor — shows a drop of 8,400 over the past year, from 219,100 workers in September 2010 to 210,700 in September 2011.

BLS cautions users of its data not to read too much into short-term changes, as data often are revised.

DES will release its October report Tuesday, Nov. 23.

Don Carrington is executive editor of Carolina Journal. Prior to joining the John Locke Foundation and CJ, he was deputy director of ESC’s Labor Market Information Division.