RALEIGH – For months, North Carolina Democrats and Republicans have exchanged widely divergent accounts of state employment trends. And for months, journalists, activists, and policy analysts have eagerly awaited the latest jobs data to see if they comport with their preexisting positions.

To everyone, I offer this suggestion: give yourself an early Christmas present and just stop it. You are trying to force an inherently imprecise tool – monthly employment measurement – to perform a task for which it is entirely unsuited: settling a political dispute.

During the 2011 legislative session, Gov. Beverly Perdue and Democratic lawmakers said that the state should extend a sales-tax increase that was set to expire. They argued that if the sales tax dropped to its pre-2009 level, necessitating hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to balance the budget, 20,000 to 30,000 government employees and contractors would lose their jobs.

House Speaker Thom Tillis, Senate leader Phil Berger, and Republican lawmakers responded that the state should allow the sales-tax increase to expire as scheduled. They argued that state spending was unsustainably high, that job losses associated with budget cuts would be in the thousands rather than the tens of thousands, that many of those jobs would be either part-time or unfilled, and that lower tax rates would result in greater private-sector job creation.

I think that the latter argument is more persuasive. Perhaps you disagree. But surely you can see that neither argument can reasonably be assessed with only a few months of data. Government employment data are estimates. They are often adjusted later with the benefit of hindsight. They convey useful information, but any single month or quarter would be insufficient to draw firm conclusions about the economic effects of any public policy.

If you’ve been reading Carolina Journal, you know that we have been urging people not to jump to conclusions. We have looked back at jobs trends over time, noting that even “seasonally adjusted” numbers seem to demonstrate seasonal patterns – government employment drops during the summer and recovers in the fall, for example, and it often takes until December to really see what’s happening in staffing levels at public schools and universities.

As it turns out, the just-released jobs numbers for November further illustrate why cautious analysis is a more appropriate approach than political gamesmanship. From the raw data:

• The number of jobs in state education services (including public higher education) was about 1,500 lower in November 2011 than in November 2010. The number of jobs in local education services (including public schools) was about 5,100 lower in November 2011 than in November 2010. In total, then, government education jobs dropped by 6,600 during the period. Keep in mind that these are both full-time and part-time positions, and are mostly nonteaching positions.

• More generally, state and local government employment dropped by 12,500 jobs. If you adjusted for full-time-equivalency, the count would likely be around half that figure.

• Meanwhile, there were 31,200 more private-sector jobs in November 2011 than in November 2010. Again, some of these jobs are part-time.

So, did the budget cuts have no effect on government employment? Of course not. In fact, there was a good case to be made that North Carolina governments remained overstaffed going into the 2011 legislative session. Some adjustment was necessary. Conservatives ought not to suggest that making government smaller and more manageable is possible without some government workers leaving to seek employment in the private sector.

On the other hand, did the budget cuts wreak havoc on North Carolina’s labor market? Of course not. The number of government jobs lost lies somewhere between the Republican and Democratic projections – the issue of sheer count vs. full-time-equivalent positions remains unsettled – and private hiring has more than offset the effect so far.

It remains too early to offer a definitive conclusion about the 2011 budget debate, however. Perhaps there will be a bruising round of government layoffs after New Year’s. Perhaps the private-sector trends will change. Again, if you are a partisan seeking affirmation or ammunition here, knock it off and go watch a Christmas movie or something.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.