From Ezra Klein:
The size of our workforce dedicated to imprisoning mostly-non-violent Americans is not merely equal, but significantly larger, than the workforces of our country’s most massive three employers combined.
Ezra is commenting on this article and, more specifically, this little nugget:
Other industrial democracies, even those with significant crime problems of their own, are much less punitive: our incarceration rate is 6.2 times that of Canada, 7.8 times that of France, and 12.3 times that of Japan. We have a corrections sector that employs more Americans than the combined work forces of General Motors, Ford, and Wal-Mart, the three largest corporate employers in the country, and we are spending some $200 billion annually on law enforcement and corrections at all levels of government, a fourfold increase (in constant dollars) over the past quarter century.
UPDATE: — Be sure to check the comments section, where John Fleck made an excellent point on comparing the different sectors.
John Fleck
That seems like a little bit of a cheesy comparison, a bit of apples and oranges. Wouldn’t it be more useful (albeit less rhetorically powerful) to compare the corrections sector of our economy to the retail sector, or the auto sector, etc., rather than compare one entire sector to individual employers? No doubt it’s still quite large, but wouldn’t that be a more appropriate way of thinking about this?
Avelino Maestas
John,
OK, I did some digging (and damn if it isn’t hard to find to find this data. Not hard in the sense that I had to call somebody or anything, but locating the work sectors on the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site is a true pain in the ass — strange how 30 minutes of searching seems like a lot of work in the age of Google).
Anyhoo, here’s the data on the U.S. automotive sector: 1.1 million jobs in 2004. During that same year, corrections officers held about 484,000 jobs. So, there aren’t quite half as many corrections jobs as automotive manufacture jobs. In addition, here’s info on grocery store retail workers (2.4 million jobs).
Regardless, that’s a huge sector.
NewMexiKen
I’m confused. Wal-Mart is said to have 1.8 million employees. McDonalds and UPS are the second and third largest employers according to most lists. What is Ezra talking about?
Avelino Maestas
So, OK. Here goes: the most recent data I could find (and even this was hard to sort and search, because no matter what type of search you conduct, it returns results based on revenues) was the Fortune Global 500.
Here are the top employers based on size (as best as I could determine):
1. Wal-Mart (1.9 million employees)
2. U.S. Postal Service (796,199 employees)
3. UPS (428,000 employees)
4. Citigroup (332,000 employees)
5. General Electric (319,000 employees)
6. Home Depot (305,760 employees)
7. Ford Motor Co. (283,000 employees)
8. General Motors (280,000 employees)
9. Federal Express (221,677 employees)
Ken, I’m not sure what figures Loury (not Ezra, BTW) was using to make the claim that there are more corrections workers than Wal-Mart, GM and Ford. For starters, it looks like they’re not the three largest employers (even excluding the Postal Service, there are larger employers than Ford and G.M., and Wal-Mart is simply massive). In fact, he never cites the number in his article (so far as I can tell).
NewMexiKen
I have been dismayed a lot recently by the sheer amount of inaccuracy by the so-called reality political bloggers. They are as likely (as a group, I mean, of course, not every individual) to be as careless as they claim the MSM to be. This would appear to be a good example by Ezra’s source of not knowing what they were talking about, and by Ezra of accepting a claim without checking.
I thought John Fleck’s point a good one, too.
And not to belabor insignificant numbers, but McDonalds (corporate and franchises) claims about 450,000 employees.
Avelino Maestas
Ken,
I can’t say I disagree — the above has definitely shown that, though not necessarily malicious, bloggers can quote and spread claims that aren’t correct. One could argue that Loury should have verified his facts (or listed the source data for his claims), but, as you said, bloggers regularly deride journalists who repeat information without checking its accuracy.
Nonetheless, the substance of Loury’s article shouldn’t be dismissed: there has been an incredible increase in the number of Americans incarcerated during the last few decades, and there are clear and fundamental reasons for that increase.
Michelle Meaders
Since you are using the Fortune Global 500, you may be comparing US vs. world-wide employee numbers. Does that help? And isn’t it hard to tell these days how many workers corporations really have? So many of them register offshore to avoid paying taxes. Or they call their workers Independent Contractors, or hire them as contract labor, with no benefits, through an agency. That happens a lot with computer workers, like some of my relatives.
Even so, it looks like a huge amount of US resources are devoted to locking up and guarding people who aren’t really dangerous to others. What a waste, to both sides! And being in either position doesn’t seem to improve people.