At times I read economic material that is off topic (in terms of the actual International Economics textbook), but I cannot help but share. So I am starting a new category, titbits, referencing the dictionary definition of the term: a tasty small piece of food for thought…

Who'd have thought it (from the New York Times):

Conservative states tend to employ larger shares of state and local government workers in the US

Source: Report on public sector wages, Center for Economic and Policy Research, using Labor Department data; U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

The more dominated a state is by public-sector workers, the less likely that state was to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate. Any theories? Catherine Campell suggests two potential explanation:

1) Liberal states tend to be more urban, and big cities have a lot of private industry that can dwarf the size of state and local governments.

2) Maybe this is not “big government” versus “small government,” but federal vs local government – since these data refer to a very specific segment of the government: non-federal workers. Maybe, Jeffersonian-style, it’s not such a big contradiction for states to be hostile to candidates perceived to be expanding the size of the federal government, and to still employ lots of workers at the state and local levels.