Phoenix-metro government jobs, September 2026
Phoenix-metro government employers had 257,900 people on payroll in September 2026, down 1.1% from a year earlier. That is 10.4% of all payroll jobs in the metro, against 10.6% a year before.
Federal, state and local government, including public schools, the state universities, public hospitals and the Postal Service — and, because BLS counts them as local government, tribal enterprises such as casinos. Government hiring follows tax revenue with a lag, which is why its share tends to rise in a recession: the private sector cuts first. The deep sawtooth in both lines is the school year — public-school staff come off the payroll count every summer — so this series above all needs the year-over-year comparison.
The two charts answer different questions. The count peaked at 265,000 in November 2024 and says whether the sector is hiring. The share — from 14.1% in January 1990, with a high of 15.8% in October 1991 and a low of 9.5% in June 2026 — says whether it is growing faster or slower than the rest of the economy.
Not seasonally adjusted, so compare a month with the same month a year earlier. The share is computed at read time from two series in the same BLS release, so it stays consistent when the levels are revised.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, State & Area Employment, government and total nonfarm payrolls, Phoenix–Mesa–Chandler MSA, not seasonally adjusted, via FRED (PHOE004GOVTN, PHOE004NAN). The share is derived at read time. Auto-generated each build.