Area's staple base of gov't workers is under pressure

For the last decade, about 21 percent of the Tucson metro area's workforce has been employed in government jobs - and that doesn't include military installations such as Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. That compares with about 13.5 percent in the Phoenix metro area in 2011 and 17 percent for the state as a whole.

That dependence on public-sector work is reflected in this year's Star 200 survey of Southern Arizona biggest workplaces: Eight of the region's top 10 employers are government entities, including the biggest, the University of Arizona, which had 10,681 full-time-equivalent jobs at the end of last year. Across the six-county Star 200 survey area, government employment accounts for more than 17 percent of all jobs, a figure that rises to more than 31 percent when military employment is included.

But the federal, state and local government employees who have prized their stable jobs with good benefits have found their career assumptions challenged in recent years.

City workers lost the equivalent of 3.5 percent of their pay over 2 1/2 years as they were forced to take nine furlough days in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 and five in the current year ending June 30 to help the city reduce spending. (Public-safety personnel had four furlough days in fiscal 2010). For five years, city workers have not had a raise.

In recent discussions on the city budget for fiscal 2013, officials said the city likely would avoid layoffs, furloughs and pay cuts, and there has been some talk of a small wage increase.

"We feel like we've done our part. We've sacrificed, we've made it through," said Jerry Gebell a senior welder at Tucson Water and union steward for his AFSCME local. "Now we want to be compensated for some of our losses."

But that's easier said than done. The current economic recovery has been the only one of the last four to feature major job losses in the public sector, said David Cooper, an economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

In Arizona, 16,400 state and local government jobs were wiped out, he said. Nationwide,765,000 such jobs were lost. That has helped keep the unemployment rate up and made government workers feel vulnerable.

"You always think government doesn't really pay that well, but you used to be able to count on the benefits being there," said John Becker, who has worked for Pima County for about 20 years in the Assessor's Office.

Jim Meskan, a senior engineering associate in the city's planning department, said he still gets great satisfaction from his job, even if it feels less guaranteed than it once did. The furlough days and layoffs in other departments have robbed him of the feeling that a city job is "sacrosanct" unless the employee does something egregious, he said.

A drive in Arizona's Legislature - failed so far - threatens to take away two forms of protection for government workers. One set of bills, abandoned in the Legislature this year, would have banned collective bargaining by government entities in the state, effectively ending unionization of public workers. Another, pushed by Gov. Jan Brewer, attempted to strip away the traditional merit-system protections that make it harder to fire government workers.

Gov't jobs aid economy

It isn't just the private sector that affects a region's economic life, said Marshall Vest, an economist at the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management.

"I think it's important to keep in mind that the activities and spending of government do count," Vest said. "It's not as though a dollar spent by government is a dollar wasted and that it only counts when it's spent in the private sector."

One key to extending the impact is bringing in tax dollars from outside rather than recirculating money already in the community, Vest said.

That happens at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Southern Arizona's fourth-biggest employer in this year's survey, with 8,566 full-time-equivalent jobs. Another growing federal agency is Customs and Border Protection, of which the Border Patrol is a part. Overall, the agency reported about 6,000 jobs at the end of last year.

Byron Schlomach, an economist at the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, isn't so positive about such a large government presence in a region's workforce and economy.

"The way people should take this is, with that many people on the public payroll, that is a reflection on how productive that area is. And it's a bad reflection," Schlomach said. "It's basically saying, less than 80 percent of your workforce is actually out there producing wealth, real wealth, goods and services that actually enhance our standard of living."

SPECIAL SECTION IN CLASSIFIED The Star's annual survey gives the big picture of local employers, trends

Government jobs by the numbers

21 percent

Tucson metro workforce employed in government jobs

13.5 percent

Phoenix metro workforce employed in government jobs

17 percent

Southern Arizona workforce employed in government jobs

SOURCE: Star 200

Assistant Business Editor David Wichner contributed to this story. Contact reporter Tim Steller at 807-8427 or tsteller@azstarnet.com