Hello, chickens, welcome to the roost

An amusing report from the Ceeb, just before Christmas came along and ruined everything:

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Kathy Dunderdale is warning civil servants to temper their hopes for a hefty raise once their contracts expire.

...

"I think they have to expect a more modest increase," Dunderdale told CBC News in a year-end interview to be broadcast later this week on On Point with David Cochrane.

"Our spending at the rate that we've been doing over the last eight years — and it has been very necessary for a number of very good reasons to do that — is not sustainable in the long run," Dunderdale said.

Herewith, a chart showing the growth in the provincial public-sector payroll over the past decade and a bit. (Figures are monthly rolling twelve-month trailing totals, in order to smooth out seasonality.)

The increase, especially since 2006, is a product of both the public-sector pay raises in recent collective agreements, and the sheer increase in the provincial public sector during the NDP Progressive Conservative Williams Government years.

By late 2010, the provincial public sector accounted for fully 25% of all jobs in the province — a share unprecedented not only in Newfoundland and Labrador's recorded economic history, but in the history of any province.

It's nice to see that the "Conservatives", having spent billions buying public-sector labour peace, and quarterly popularity reports for Eternal Premier, have finally discovered fiscal sustainability.

And good luck to them as they sell their message of sustainabily to a public, a labour market, and an electorate, where, thanks to their own differently-sustainable policy choices, one in four people is directly, or nearly-directly, on the provincial government payroll.