The Nation - News from April 21, 1989

More Americans are employed by government than ever before, a growth helped by a boom in jobs at prisons and jails, a Census Bureau report showed. “Corrections is the fastest-growing segment” of government employment, said Meredith De Hart, a social science analyst at the Census Bureau. Employment of federal, state and local governments totaled a record 17.3 million people as of October, 1987, the most recent period for which statistics are available, the bureau reported. But while that represented an increase of 2.1% from 1986, employment in corrections jumped 9.5% to 425,000, the report said.