State and local governments are in their best financial shape since the recession, giving them leeway to cushion the
U.S. economy from
federal budget cuts with spending and hiring of their own.
After
slashing their workforces by about half a million in the past five
years, state and local authorities will add employees in 2013, said
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester,
Pennsylvania. Their payrolls in the fourth quarter will be 220,000 larger than in the same period for 2012, he projects.
Their expenditures and
investment also will be higher, rising by 1.8 percent, triple the
increase last year, according to projections by St. Louis-based
Macroeconomic Advisers.
“The bloodletting on the state- and
local-government level has finally passed through,” said Jim Diffley,
chief U.S. regional economist for IHS Global Insight in Philadelphia.
“They’re no longer subtracting from growth.”
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