Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has unveiled a 5-year plan to cut the city's structural deficit that includes reducing pension costs, cutting the city's burden of employee health care expenditures, and raising taxes on casinos. But conspicuously absent from his plan is any effort to shrink significantly the city's bloated workforce.
Detroit currently employees nearly 13,000 workers in a city whose population has declined from a peak of nearly 2 million decades ago to just 713,000 in the recent census. Similarly-sized cities have far smaller workforces. Columbus, Ohio, for instance, employs 4,594 fewer workers, and Indianapolis, 5,900 fewer.
Detroit currently employees nearly 13,000 workers in a city whose population has declined from a peak of nearly 2 million decades ago to just 713,000 in the recent census. Similarly-sized cities have far smaller workforces. Columbus, Ohio, for instance, employs 4,594 fewer workers, and Indianapolis, 5,900 fewer.
Bing argues the city needs more workers because they serve residents over "139 square miles dotted with abandoned buildings and 100,000 vacant lots," as the Detroit News recently observed. But the newspaper also noted that the high taxes necessary to maintain that workforce--Detroit has among the highest taxes for those making more than $50,000 annually of any city--may have contributed to population decline over the decades. Bing faces pressure from the city council to incorporate layoffs into his budget projections.
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