Wichita area job growth

Private sector job growth in the Wichita area is improving, but lags behind local government employment growth.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics through 2014 allows us to compare trends of employment in the Wichita metropolitan area. Over the past few years we see private sector employment rising. At the same time government employment, particularly state and local government employment, has declined or leveled.

Over the 24 years covered by the chart, private sector employment grew by 16 percent. Local government employment grew by 41 percent.

This long-term trend is a problem. It is the private sector that generates the taxes that pay for government. When government grows faster than the private sector, economic activity is shifted away from productive activities to unproductive. The economist Dan Mitchell has proposed what he calls the “Golden Rule of Fiscal Policy,” which is: “The Private Sector should Grow Faster than Government.” This is not happening in the Wichita metropolitan area.