The private sector has not created jobs in a year!

An amazing post by Yves Smith describes how the private sector is not the jobs generating machine the Republican claim it to be. Her post was in response to a column by David Broder, who suggested that the way out of our current economic slump is to start a war with Iran. (I think Yves' post ran as a response guest column in the Washington Post, Broder's paper. His column has drawn much fired, and deservedly so.)

Here are a couple of charts from Yves' post.

This first one show private sector job growth over a decade. From 1965 through 2001, there were 20% more private sector jobs than a decade previously. From 2001 until today, that percentage has declined steadily until we now face not job growth at all for the past decade—or at least through early 2009.

Even the jobs that have been created in the private sector have to a great extent been funded by the government.