What was involved?
Did they involve immediate changes?
Was each one implemented fully?
A few weeks ago I heard George Will state that not a single public sector job had been eliminated at that point.
Elimination of public sector jobs != reducing the revenue/expenditure problem. Even within the public sector jobs arena, they could have taken a reduced benefit package (such as reduced pay or more likely raised age of retirement.) Or not, I don’t know.
Your right. The austerity measures have largely taken the form of pay-cuts, hiring freezes and lessened benefits for public workers, rather then outright firing. As a practical matter, I imagine the combination of hiring freeze and lessened pay would’ve cut the roles of public workers however, as people left due to the pay cuts (or just retired) and weren’t replaced.
I’ll add the reason for not firing is pretty straight-forward. If you just fire employees, you create a big cohort of newly unemployed people who, given the state of the rest of the economy, are likely to stay unemployed for a long period of time. This creates social problems, ends up being a drain on public assistence (thus eating into any savings derived from firing them in the first place) and, leaves gov’t services understaffed. If you just cut everyones salaries, it puts a downward pressure on wages across the board, and you don’t end up with a large mass of unemployed people with nothing to do but riot, turn to criminality and use public assistance resources.
I should have left off that last sentence in order to get a more general answer on the number of packages, what was involved and whether they involved immediate changes or kicked the can down the road.