[iseletsk]

What article is not mentioning is this, for the US:

Private sector: + 687,000

Government sector: – 319,000

Total: + 181,000

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The government sector doesn't produce virtually anything that counts toward GDP, so GDP growth relates not to 181k of total employment growth but to 687k of private-sector growth. So, no, this is not about eliminating jobs and a few people getting rich. It is about statistcs, and lying to force the agenda.

[ceejayoz]

> The government sector doesn't produce virtually anything that counts toward GDP…

By a very narrow, technically-correct view, sure.

Preventing, say, people starving to death, dying of preventable disease, unchecked fraud, invasions by other countries, etc. probably helps GDP a bit.

[ne0flex]

I'd also argue that some services provided by the gov't help towards GDP. An example being the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and them helping to recoup funds from scams and returning the money to victims who would then spend their money and increase the "Consumption" in GDP.

[ceejayoz]

I was just editing my comment to say the same, yeah.

[wat10000]

I'm very skeptical of the idea that somebody working on, say, nuclear security "doesn't produce virtually anything," while a privately-employed rent-a-cop counts as productive GDP growth.

Even if we take your premise as given, isn't ~700,000 a pretty terrible number? Last year's headlines were, 2024 job growth was much lower than previously estimated, at only 1.5 million. 2023 was 2.7 million. Even if we put that down to pandemic recovery, typical pre-pandemic numbers were around 2 million outside of recessions.

[oytis]

> The government sector doesn't produce virtually anything that counts toward GDP,

This sounds very wrong?

[ceejayoz]

It's largely correct in the "everyone who died in 2025 consumed significant quantities of the dangerous chemical dihydrogen monoxide" sense.

[oytis]

How is that, I don't get it?

> Gross Domestic Product (GDP) includes consumer spending, government spending, net exports, and total investments.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gdp.asp

[ceejayoz]

A lot of government spending is (again, technically) them giving money to the folks who spend the money to produce GDP-y things. NASA hires Boeing, ICE buys cloud services from Microsoft, the military buys Starlink, etc.

[catigula]

This probably goes hard if you work at a SaaS company that monetizes interest on micro-loans or something.

[scottious]

This feels like such a weird non-sequiter argument, but I can't exactly put my finger on it. This comment seems to be asserting (1) government jobs don't produce value and (2) GDP is the only thing that matters.

I'm ignoring the fact that I don't actually know how government sector jobs contribute to or affect GDP.

Seems like by this logic, why not just cut ALL government jobs? Obviously that's a terrible idea...