I don't know, but I suspect they are at or near the top.

Woykld be nice to know which states have fired the least as well.

Here's one: http://www.governing.com/blogs/by-the-numbers/2011-local-government-public-employee-job-losses.html

The Fox article references a study, but of course doesn't link to it. : http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/19/report-states-have-cut-thousands-government-jobs-since-recession/?test=latestnews

Maybe another DUer will find the study the article is based on.

"Alaska had the most with 34.9, while Illinois had the fewest with 4.1 after cutting more than 4,000 workers from the state payroll since 2007. The AP figures exclude K-12 teachers and employees in higher education systems.

Indiana, Ohio and Michigan were the only other states with five or fewer state employees per 1,000 residents. Each has seen steep reductions in the number of state workers since 2007 because of budget pressures.

States with smaller populations had the highest number of state workers per 1,000 residents, led by Alaska, Delaware (18.7), Connecticut (17.6) and Wyoming (16.7).

The fifth-highest rate was in Virginia, where there were 14.4 state employees per 1,000 people despite the state shedding nearly 1,700 state workers between the 2007 and 2011 budget years.

Virginia's high level of state employees may be linked to its ranking third in the country in state-maintained highways, although successive governors have sought to chip away at the number of road workers employed by the state."

I can begin to work with this

It's bogus not to count teacher and school staff layoffs, furloughs, etc. Many states are doing a lot of cutting to education in the name of balancing budgets, while at the same time cutting taxes for the rich and big business (Georgia for example just passed over $195 Million in tax cuts for business yet teachers are still being laid off, class sizes are increasing, school staff are taking furlough days, and schools are being closed).

Thanks

If I were looking I would start there.

Don

here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002648747

You can access the data here:
http://www.bls.gov/sae/#data

Use the one-screen data search tool.

You can select any or all states, specific regions in states, all general employment sectors (including what you're looking for, government) and the subsectors of government employment (like state or local government employment). You can also look for more specific subsectors like education employment. When you get the output you can adjust the years and choose to provide a graph for each data series.

I recommend using only seasonally adjusted data, particularly since you want to compare april '12 to january '09.

Great link

Florida should be competitive, but our government workforce was fairly small relative to population. We had one of the smallest and least expensive government workforces in the country, before the cuts, which have been heavy.

A few things of note:

Local employment is much more than state employment.
Declines in local employment start sooner and are more gradual and consistent
Many states with big drops in state employment started in mid '10 to '11 after remaining at around the same level since '08.

States with big housing booms suffered the worst local government job losses.
Population changes appear to have a positive effect on government employment.

Considering that states(&local) need to finance jobs with state (&local) taxes and their ability to borrow money is very limited I don't think that state governments have much flexibility to run budget deficits during a recession. This is particularly true if you're talking about a state that was hit very hard by the recession, like Nevada or Florida.

Finally, I'll say that the premise of your conspiracy seems a little off. Republicans want to cut government jobs, not as an act of sabotage to make things worse but because they believe that government jobs are a hindrance to the economy and that the fewer gov jobs there are, the better. And both republicans and democrats are willing to cut government jobs if there simply isn't any money to pay for them (either through falling tax collections due to a bad economy or an inability to borrow funds).

evidence that shows the newer govt. jobs there are the better.
The reason the money is not there is because of ReTHUG policies against taxation.
It is their candidates who have to sign Grover Norquist's no tax pact.
Further, ReTHUGs got together on inauguration night to block all of Obama's agenda.
This is not a conspiracy - these are facts - all I want to see now is the data of how it worked out for them because we know that lots of government workers were deliberately sent packing.
I want to see the data on those states led by ReTHUGs[/s] to compare with the other states.