I have heard that the weakness in the jobs aspect of the recovery is due almost entirely to the decline in government employment and that in fact private employment is doing very well. I could not find an statistics for this over at the BLS however, so two questions a) Where would the data be; and 2) what has been the accounting for jobs in these two sectors during the recent economic cycle?
You want to look for establishment data from the current employment survey (as opposed to household data from the current population survey). Here is this month’s report for both:
Scroll down to Table B-1. Contrast “Total Private” to “Government”. If you are interested in the current depression, distinguish between “Federal” and “State and Local”: the latter had big declines. Private employment has grown.
Use the news release above to get an idea of what you are interested in. Then try the CES homepage to download the series: http://www.bls.gov/ces/