Nationwide cutback in government jobs; Illinois down for years

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Updated: March 1, 2012 9:50AM

State and local governments across the country trimmed their overall work forces in 2010 for the first time in two decades, new U.S. Census estimates showed Monday.

The 1 percent decline mirrors already-established trends in Illinois, where headcounts within state government and at City Hall have undergone belt-tightening for the past decade.

Nationally, in 2010, there were 16.6 million full-time employees in state and local governments across the country, 203,321 fewer than were employed in 2009, the Census Bureau reported.

The bulk of those workers — 9 million — were employed in hospitals, on police forces and in prisons.

Part-time state and local government employees slipped by 27,567 in 2010 to about 4.8 million.

The downward trend marks the first time since 1992 that state and local governments nationally employed fewer people than in the year before.

In Illinois, the state work force stood at 51,904 at the end of December, down 25 percent from 2002. That year, state government employed 69,003 people. “It has eroded quality and efficiency of services provided to the public and, by forcing the state to rely on huge amounts of overtime, has burned out the skeleton workforce that remains,” said Anders Lindall, a spokesman for AFSCME Council 31, which represents the largest unionized bloc of state workers.

A December analysis by the Associated Press showed Illinois had the lowest ratio of public workers per 1,000 residents of any state nationally. The report did not include education employees.

Gov. Pat Quinn has threatened to cut even more through various state facility closures. Last fall, seven state facilities were on the chopping block that had imperiled 2,600 state government jobs.

But facing resistance from lawmakers and AFSCME, the Quinn administration backed off and has shifted its focus on closing two state institutions — the Tinley Park Mental Health Center and the Jacksonville Developmental Center downstate. The administration insisted those moves, opposed by AFSCME, go beyond the $19.8 million in savings that will result from closing the facilities and laying off 550 workers. Shifting developmentally disabled residents into community-based settings will heighten their living conditions, Quinn’s aides said.