Illinois has the smallest number of state workers per 1,000 residents of any state in the union.
That’s the conclusion of a new study by the Associated Press, which says Illinois, after shedding 4,000 employees since 2007 now has 4.1 workers for every 1,000 state residents.
Other midwest states — Indiana, Michigan and Ohio — are the only others in the nation with five or fewer state workers per capita.
Alaska has the greatest number of state workers for its popuation — with 34.9 per thousand.
The AP figures exclude K-12 teachers and higher-education employees.
You need to look deeper
You really need to look deeper to determine the number of public workers in Illinois. The classification of a state worker is just part of the problem.
Illinois has the most levels of government of any 2 states in the union. It has double the next highest state. In each of these levels you have staff that duplicates the work being done in other levels. This is especially true in the areas of education.
I am almost certain that this survey did not include the multitute of state committies Illinois has. Most of these are paid by the state but are not classified as state workers, even though many will receive state pensions.
Any way the AP survey is based on the information the state gives them and how many of people that live here are foolish enough to trust anything said buy an Illinois state official, elected or appointed.
Vote to Eliminate Evanston Township
The article only highlights state workers, but as "Skipw" points out, Illinois has MANY layers of government. The real question people should ask is how many TOTAL government workers are employed in Illinois, including Municipal, County, AND State (we'll exclude Federal for this discussion). Illinois has one of the highest if not the highest number of government bodies in our country, many that lack scale and are duplicative in nature. What does this mean? Services are not efficiently provided, and they are provided at a higher cost. Just look at how sanitation services are provided in the City of Chicago. It's organized by Ward. Extremely inefficient and costly. Who pays? The taxpayers. The Township structure is another example of an antiquated system that doesn't make sense in today's environment. In Evanston, the Township has the same geographic boundaries as the City of Evanston. Let's deliver the same services to the people who need them, but at a lower cost. What am missing?
Vote on March 20, 2012 to eliminate Evanston Township.
Unions and Democrats no different than Bonnie and Clyde
Here are some things you might have missed:
1) Last year 40,000 union state workers in Illinois received a 14 percent pay increase. It cost the state (taxpayers) an extra $500,000 million. The unions responded to the criticism by saying Illinois needed to raise taxes. Democrats did just that in a lame duck session, raising individual income taxes 67 percent.
2) In the past eight years, 10,000 Illinois state employees joined a union. As it stands now, 97 percent of all Illinois state workers are in a union – a four-fold increase from the previous eight years. In Wisconsin, only 60 percent of all state employees are in a union.
3) Democrat Gov. Pat Quinn is trying to renege on a no-layoff deal he made with state unions last year. After last year's deal was made, the unions gave money to Quinn's campaign. The unions are now suing.
4) The Evanston Township Assessor's Office scored the worst in the Illinois Policy Institute’s “Local Transparency Project,” which grades governments on the availability to the public of vital community information. The Evanston Township "earned a record low score of 3.125 for making available almost no information about how it spends $1.3 million in taxpayer dollars." Does anyone really know with certainty if Evanston Township Assessor and former president of the Evanston Democratic party, Bonnie Wilson (a parti-time employee) filed and received confirmation that she will get a union pension? .
5) Democrat state Rep. Daniel Biss who plans to run for a senate seat next year made the argument that pension reform will hurt state government employee recruitment. Read the Trib editorial http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-05-26/news/ct-edit-pension-20110526_1_pension-system-pension-reform-bill-raymond-poe
Here is a list of organizations trying to reform the current government union pension system and government waste, fraud and corruption in Illinois. Some of these organizations want to consolidate school districts such as D202 – a school district with ONE SCHOOL!!!!! Democrats in control of our state and who redistricted our legislative maps to basically legislate out their Republican competitors probably don't want you to know about these organizations. You'll learn a lot here. Check them out. And then VOTE!!!!!
http://www.openillinois.org
http://www.bettergov.org
http://www.illinoispolicy.org
http://www.cagw.org
I called it
Al, you are becoming a parody of yourself.
See this message.
Fewest workers but let’s talk pension liabilities
I am very surprised to learn that Illinois has fewer workers per capita. Why then are Illinois pension liabilities the second highest in the nation?
From a study conducted earlier this year:
http://www.statebudgetsolutions.org/doclib/20110304_StatePensionLiabilityMarch4.pdf
Time to move to Vermont!
Happy Holidays everyone – let's hope our leaders start leading.
Yours sincerely, Brian G. Becharas
Another perspective
Interestingly, Illinois is not listed in the linked article as a state with a high "backlog," despite being unable to pay its workers for some time last year.
However, the consequences of underfunding state services is something to think about.
Check employment by category, state and community at BLS
You can get the most consistant, comprehensive data on government and private sector employment and wages at the Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site. These data do not include the massive hidden deferred costs of pensions and other post employment benefits, but they will reveal the general decline of private sector employment and wages versus what is happening in the public sector.
http://data.bls.gov/pdq/querytool.jsp?survey=sm