When Barack Obama ran for president four years ago, he appalled some Democrats by saying Ronald Reagan had been a transformational president.

Three years into his presidency, he has exceeded Reagan in one area: reductions in government jobs.

FLOYD NORRIS

Notions on high and low finance.

Over all — including a decline of 12,000 public sector jobs in the Labor Department report for December — government employment is down 2.6 percent over the last three years, compared to a decline of 2.2 percent in the early Reagan years. That is a record.

That record, which will seem a dubious distinction to public-sector employees, is largely a result not of federal policy but of shrinking state governments. State employment fell 1.2 percent in 2011 — the largest percentage for any year since counting began in 1955. The number is down 2.2 percent over the last three years. It was up 1.2 percent during Reagan’s first three years, declining in only one of the years.

Local government jobs used to be deemed super safe. Since the federal government started tracking the statistic in 1955, there have been only six years when local government employment declined. They have come in threes: 1981, 1982 and 1983, the first three years of the Reagan administration, and 2009, 2010, 2011, the first three years of the Obama administration.

The declines were a little larger under Reagan. The local-government job count fell 3.8 percent under him but just 3.5 percent over the last three years. But if teacher employment is the measure, the cuts have been greater under Mr. Obama. Education jobs at the local level are down 3 percent under Mr. Obama, compared to 2.1 percent in the early Reagan years.

Federal employment fell 1.3 percent in 2011, but for the three years it is up 1.3 percent, while the total fell by the same amount in Mr. Reagan’s first three years.

The declines in government jobs in both the Reagan and Obama presidencies coincided with major recessions, of course, which reduced tax receipts for all levels of government. If Mr. Obama had had his way, state and local government job losses in 2011 could have been reduced with more federal assistance, but such proposals were blocked by Republicans in Congress.

There is no reason to think Mr. Obama is as happy about the reduction in government workers as some Republicans. But like it or not, the Obama administration has turned out to be anything but a big-government one.

Some other notes from today’s jobs report:

Manufacturing employment, the subject of my column today, rose by 23,000 jobs and was up by 225,000 jobs, or 1.9 percent, for the year. It was the second consecutive annual increase after 12 declines in a row. Construction jobs increased by 0.8 percent in 2011, the first annual increase since 2006.

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