{"id":4051,"date":"2012-01-24T08:00:06","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T15:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=4051"},"modified":"2012-01-24T08:33:30","modified_gmt":"2012-01-24T15:33:30","slug":"northwest-states-coping-with-government-employee-layoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/01\/24\/northwest-states-coping-with-government-employee-layoffs\/","title":{"rendered":"Northwest States Coping with Government Employee Layoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Emilie Ritter Saunders \/ StateImpact Idaho<\/p>

Sandy Brown has worked at the Idaho Dept. of Health and Welfare for six years.<\/p><\/div>\n

This story is a collaboration between StateImpact Idaho and Northwest News Network.\u00a0 Contributing reporters are Emilie Ritter Saunders, Chris Lehman and Austin Jenkins<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Across the Northwest, government agencies and schools have laid off thousands of workers. Just like corporate downsizing, those public sector job losses have a human and an economic impact.<\/p>\n

<\/object> Northwest States Coping with Government Layoffs<\/a><\/p>\n

The health and welfare office in Boise was unusually quiet on a recent Tuesday morning, thanks to the first major snowstorm of the year.\u00a0 Only a handful of people waited in line to sign up for food stamps, Medicaid or other programs.\u00a0 This office typically sees 100 people a day. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Emilie Ritter Saunders \/ StateImpact Idaho<\/p>

Sandy Brown helps a client with paperwork for food stamps benefits in the Boise office.<\/p><\/div>\n

Sandy Brown is one of the first faces you see when you walk into the Boise office.\u00a0 She helps people through the process of getting welfare benefits.\u00a0 Despite an increasing workload and regular required overtime, Brown loves her job.\u00a0 \u201cWe get to help people”, she says.\u00a0 It\u2019s the attitude of gratitude.\u00a0 I have a job, thank you Jesus, I have a job I get to go to every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sentiment that hits home for Brown considering more than 300 people have been laid<\/a> off from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare over the last five years.\u00a0 The department\u2019s Director Richard Armstrong recently told Idaho lawmakers who are charged with crafting the state\u2019s budget his department can\u2019t handle any more cuts.\u00a0 \u201cBecause any further reductions would have a much greater impact for participants, providers and services,” Armstrong said.<\/p>\n

In fact, Armstrong says he has a hard time keeping his current employees because of stress, increased workload and better pay in the private sector.\u00a0 This comes at a time when Idaho is dealing with a record number of people signing up for food stamps, enrollment has more than tripled in four years.\u00a0 That means employees at the Boise welfare office are stretched thin.\u00a0 Program manager Kim Lafferty says this hasn\u2019t meant a slowdown in getting benefits to those who need them.\u00a0 Still, he says more staff would help in the short term.\u00a0 “But long-term, the best thing that could happen is the economy would pick up, people go back to work, and then our caseload decreases,\u201d Lafferty says.<\/p>\n

Idaho\u2019s Department of Health and Welfare has shouldered the biggest share of state government employee layoffs in the last five years.\u00a0 The state has laid off 928 people since 2007<\/a>.\u00a0 That figure doesn\u2019t include public school teachers.<\/p>\n

State Budget Cuts Hurt Oregon Teaching Jobs<\/h3>\n

According to the Oregon Employment Department, there are nearly 10,000 fewer school district employees than there were just three years ago. One teacher who got a pink slip was Ehren Schneider.\u00a0 He was laid off from his language arts position at Centennial High School in Gresham.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Northwest News Network<\/p>

File photo of North Salem High School in Oregon.<\/p><\/div>\n

“Well it was shocking,” Schneider says.\u00a0 “And as a grown man, I have to say at one point I was almost fighting back tears.\u00a0 I love teaching.\u00a0 Teaching is a passion of mine.”\u00a0 Schneider has been able to substitute teach some and his wife has a full-time job. Still, “it’s a dramatic cutback in everything we do, because there isn’t the same amount of money coming in per month.”<\/p>\n

Losing education jobs means larger class sizes.\u00a0 But Willamette University economics professor Jerry Gray says those laid-off teachers aren’t spending as much money in their local communities.\u00a0 “You pay somebody $40,000 annually, and they’re going spend a big portion of that,” Gray says. “And that spending might create demand for other sorts of goods and services in the economy.”
\nBut Gray has this caveat: public sector jobs are paid for with taxes that come out of someone else’s pocket. So he says there’s no net addition to the Oregon economy.\u00a0 “though the distribution of that income is different,” Gray says.<\/p>\n

In other words, employed public workers may spend part of their paycheck in ways that creates other jobs. But he says that’s only true if the people who paid the taxes that go into a public employee’s paycheck would have hung onto the money instead of spending it themselves.<\/p>\n

Washington Lawmakers Still in Cost-Cutting Mode<\/h3>\n

In the last two months there are signs government is hiring again.\u00a0 One person who exemplifies this is state employee Keri-Anne Jetzer.\u00a0 Her low point came last year just before her lay-off took effect. She came home and opened the mail to find a rejection letter from another agency.\u00a0 \u201cI cried. I cried a lot,” says Jetzer.\u00a0 “Part of it was because I was scared. Part of it was, do my skills and abilities…is there any market for them?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jetzer was a researcher for Washington\u2019s Sentencing Guidelines Commission.\u00a0 She lost her job when that standalone agency was consolidated. Of course, she worried about paying her mortgage. But she says the blow was more than just a financial one.\u00a0 \u201cI know that it wasn\u2019t personal, but it\u2019s hard not to take it personally and feel perhaps a little sense of failure,\u201d Jetzer says.<\/p>\n

Washington has shed roughly 17,000 public sector jobs, half of which are state government positions.\u00a0 Dave Wallace is acting chief economist with Washington\u2019s Employment Security Department. He says most of these job losses actually came after the Great Recession<\/a> officially ended.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s a different cycle to it.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost a delayed effect,\u201d Wallace says.\u00a0 It\u2019s only been in the past year that Washington has lost more government jobs than any other sector.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Austin Jenkins \/ Northwest News Networkr<\/p>

Washington state employee Keri-Anne Jetzer lost her job last year, but was re-hired by another state agency.<\/p><\/div>\n

As for Keri-Anne Jetzer, she went on unemployment and spent her days looking for work.\u00a0 Jetzer has a Master\u2019s degree, but it got to the point where was she ready to take a service job to wait out the bad economy.\u00a0 And then fate intervened.\u00a0 She landed a state government job with a different agency.\u00a0 \u201cI feel fantastic, \u00a0I feel productive again,” Jetzer says.\u00a0 “I feel I have a purpose in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jetzer knows a lot of taxpayers want the state to continue to downsize and some may not like to hear Washington hired back a non-front line employee like her.\u00a0 But she feels her research into criminal justice issues helps policy makers make data driven decisions that ultimately save taxpayers money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story is a collaboration between StateImpact Idaho and Northwest News Network.\u00a0 Contributing reporters are Emilie Ritter Saunders, Chris Lehman and Austin Jenkins. Across the Northwest, government agencies and schools have laid off thousands of workers. Just like corporate downsizing, those public sector job losses have a human and an economic impact. Northwest States Coping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":4058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,15],"tags":[106,74],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4051"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4065,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4051\/revisions\/4065"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}