Mark Thoma cites two articles explaining that we've lost jobs because the federal government has failed to offset state and local austerity. First, economists Bivens and Shierholz note that we have 1.1 million fewer government jobs now than we would have following the norm for the glorious Reagan-to-Bush-II era:
It should be noted that this counter-factual of 1.1 million additional public sector jobs is a perfectly reasonable benchmark. Before the Great Recession, the number of public-sector workers per 100 people had averaged right around 7.3 since the late 1980s. In other words, having 1.1 million more public-sector workers, which would put us back at 7.3 public-sector workers per 100 people, would simply restore our economy to a normal level of government employment [Josh Bivens and Heidi Shierholz, "Three years into recovery, just how much has state and local austerity hurt job growth?" Economic Policy Institute: Working Economics, 2012.07.06].
The Obama Administration has overseen a reduction in government. That reduction has serious economic impacts:
Putting our four components together &ndash the jobs lost in the public sector, the jobs the public sector should have gained just to keep up with population growth, the jobs lost in the private sector due to direct public-sector job declines, and the jobs likely lost when state spending cutbacks on transfer programs were made&ndash we find that if it weren't for state and local austerity, the labor market would have 2.3 million more jobs today &ndash and half of these jobs would be in the private sector.
This is more than a fifth of our 9.8 million "jobs gap", the number of jobs needed to bring the economy back to full employment. If all of these 2.3 million jobs had been filled, it is likely that the unemployment rate would now be between 6.7% and 7.5% instead of 8.2%, and the labor force participation rate ... would be up to three-tenths of a percentage point higher than it is [Bivens and Shierholz, 2012.07.06].
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that local governments (i.e., school baords) shed 100,000 education jobs over the past 12 months. Firing teachers, policemen, and firemen sandbags the economy. Willard M. Romney wants states to continue firing teachers, policemen, and firemen.
Thoma then points to a Brookings Institute summary of two studies that finds the 2009 stimulus at least moderated the impacts of those public-sector job losses:
The Great Recession resulted in significant increases in unemployment, but it did not impact all states equally. In fact, one contributor to the disparities appears to have been the differences in state government spending. Those states that increased per-capita expenditures the most experienced the smallest rises in unemployment rates, while those that increased expenditures the least experienced the largest rises in unemployment. Although state governments certainly played a role in shaping their economic situations, much of the increased state spending was financed by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the federal stimulus plan), which put significant amounts of money directly into depleted state coffers [Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney, "The Role of Fiscal Stimulus in the Ongoing Recovery," Brookings Institute: UpFront, 2012.07.06].
Putting people to work teaching and protecting your kids gives you and your community direct economic and social benefit. Romney prefers the roundabout route of cutting those jobs, handing more national wealth to his rich friends, and telling you to hope their hedge-fund gambling and yacht purchases will eventually trickle down to you so you can buy yourself a gun and a copy of Saxon Math.
If you want the economy to grow, or if you just want to protect basic public services, the last person you want in charge of the public sector is someone who enjoys firing people.
Update 11:01 CDT: Lyndon Baines Johnson offered this observation on Republican economics:
When I took over the presidency, Jack Kennedy had left me a stock market of 711. When I left the White House, it was over 900. Now look at it. That's what happens when the Republicans take over—not only Nixon, but any of them. They simply don't know how to manage the economy. They're so busy operating the trickle-down theory, giving the richest corporations the biggest break, that the whole thing goes to hell in a handbasket [Lyndon Baines Johnson, quoted in Leo Janos, "The Last Days of the President: LBJ in Retirement," The Atlantic Monthly, July 1973].