Monday, May 1, 2017

Blog Mirror: Today In Wyoming's History: May 1. The state completely freezes hiring, but are things stabilizing , and does that matter?

From our history blog:
Today In Wyoming's History: May 1:

2017  A complete freeze on state hiring commences.
But what does that mean?  Do they not even fill vacated positions?  I think not, but I'm not sure.

I know why the state has done this. The recent economic downturn, which I posted on a lot in 2015 and 2016, dried up a lot of the state's funding.  The irony, however, is that coal production is actually back up quite a bit. Oil seems to be coming back as well, although the price remains in the $60/bbl region.  This may, therefore, be a bit of the backside of a cycle not catching up with the front.  I.e., maybe the "hard freeze" made more sense a year ago than it does now.

Of course it may also be that we're in a new economic era in the state, as I've noted before.  If so, we may have to acclimate to a smaller government, indeed a smaller everything, for quite some time.

No comments: