How Big is Big Government?: Exploring Trends in Public Employment

Among many other data collected, the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey contains a raft of economic and employment information, including whether respondents are employed by the state. As a representation of public spending and services rendered, public employment numbers can be used as a proxy for the “size” of government. They can also provide a sense of what portion of the economy is under direct public oversight and management.

Using Census employment data, and pairing it with additional data sources, I’ve created two visualizations that allow for exploration of public employment numbers broken down by state.

These interactive tools let the user examine public employment data in more detail, and offer a window into other factors that may help illustrate the political economy of each state, including:

• Total workforce (as an appropriate proxy for population)
• Unemployment rates
• GDP
• Political party affiliation/governance

This tool offers an easy access point to granular public employment numbers. Use it to test or challenge your own assumptions about small vs. big government, or as a grounding point to further research.

The data above was pulled from multiple sources detailed below. I used python to clean, combine, and run some basic analysis on the data to structure the visualizations above.

• U.S. Census Data I pulled public employment numbers, total employment numbers, and classification of workers by state. Unfortunately the other economic data I was looking for initially, on wages and poverty, proved much more difficult to work with on the state level.
• Political Party Data There are many metrics by which to determine political affiliation, but since this tool was built to explore state-level differences, I opted to provide the governor’s party affiliation. In most states, the governor, as chief executive, has great influence, if not ultimate authority, over state spending. The data included here was from 2019.
• State GDP Data Although biased towards the interests of private business, the GDP is one tool for measuring the economic size and health of a given territory. The last full and reliable data set from this report was created in 2019.
• State Outlines