Yeah, but I told them this last year...

Shock! Horror! Outrage! in today's FT:

Jobs boom since 1998 'fuelled by public sector'

Two out of three jobs created since 1998 have been in parts of the economy dominated by public services, casting a fresh light on Labour's economic stewardship, an FT investigation shows. The dominance of the public sector has been so pronounced that in some areas the number employed in the private sector fell between 1998 and 2006 in spite of the strength of the economy over that period...

The ONS's flagship survey shows that 1.3m of the total jobs created were in health, education, social care and public administration, implying the rate of job creation was twice as fast in the parts of the economy dominated by public sector money than in the rest of the economy.

Only, the increase is far more than 1.3m. My reader's letter, published in the FT on 19 April 2007:

Sir,

Your article "Not working: why France may find its social model exacts too high a price" (FT, 16 April) states "Since 1982 the state has hired an additional 1m employees, taking its total payroll to 5m. The public sector now employs almost one-quarter of France's labour force...About half the French electorate is dependent on the state for wages, benefits or pensions".

Substitute "1997" for "1982" and "7m"* for "5m" (using the International Labour Organisation's definition of public sector employment) and much the same applies to the UK.

Yours faithfully etc

* Actually, it turns out that there are now 8 million (not just 7 million) on the public payroll in the UK (see column L-N in Table 5.2 of this), as against 6 million in 1997 (an increase of 2 million, not 1.3 million), but hey..