1.8 temporary workers behind 1 official number! The "civil servant economy" cannot fight the economy

Fundamentally, the tight fiscal situation can only be solved by a more active economy and more abundant financial resources. No matter how delicate the knife technique is used to divide the cake, it cannot change the fact that the cake is limited, and making the cake bigger is the better way.

Written by丨Aoyagi

Banyuetan recently published a report that uncovered the corner of the county's deformed finances.

Banyuetan reporters recently saw the phenomenon of "poor financial wealth supporting people" during their investigation in A county in the Wumeng Mountains - the number of financial supporters continued to expand, which brought a heavy burden to the county-level finances.

The report mentioned that in 2023, the total expenditure of the county's salary budget for the year will be 2.63 billion yuan, including 2 billion yuan for incumbents, 170 million yuan for retirees, and 460 million yuan for temporary employees. Although the total salary budget for temporary staff is less than a quarter of the total salary budget for incumbents, the number is 1.8 times that of the latter.

In 2022, the general public budget revenue of County A will complete 702 million yuan. Local revenues account for only one-third to one-quarter of total wage expenditures, and the rest is paid by diverting funds from transfers.

Picture/"Half Moon Talk" public account

In other words, the income paid by the fiscal surplus area is transferred to this underdeveloped region, not for industrial development and people's livelihood expenditures, but for the wages of "people in the system" - a considerable part of them are temporary workers.

01

As soon as the report was published, it attracted widespread attention.

These temporary workers in County A range from ecological rangers, assistant police, and village cadres to drivers, cooks, and typists. Their monthly salary is not high, about two or three thousand yuan, but because they do not need to go through the approval or filing of the establishment department, the financial department, the organization department, and the human resources and social security department, the recruitment procedure is relatively casual, so it has swelled rapidly.

Moreover, in some districts and counties in the Wumeng Mountains, in accordance with the requirements of "ensuring wages, operation, and people's livelihood" at the grassroots level, the salary expenditure of temporary employees must be included in the county-level financial wage budget to ensure it. In other words, despite the fact that these temporary workers do not have high wages, they are "jobs within the system".

▲Wumeng Mountain is connected to the mountains outside the mountain (Picture/Picture Worm Creativity)

It's not hard to imagine how popular this is in less developed areas that lack hematopoietic capacity. I can't find any decent jobs in the local area, but there are many twists and turns, and I can find a job in the public sector to ensure income during drought and flood, and many people will inevitably rush to it. The Banyuetan reporter also said that "it is difficult to eliminate the employment of favors and relationships." Obviously, "more difficult to eliminate" is a bit euphemistic.

The situation in County A is not unique, and similar phenomena exist in quite a few places. Nowadays, the Internet has even coined a term: "civil service economy".

The so-called "civil servant economy" roughly refers to the disproportionate expansion of personnel in the system, and the county economy revolves around a broad group of civil servants, and even consumption must be driven by the people in the system - in areas that lack pillar industries, they are already enviable high-net-worth people with stable incomes.

The "civil service economy" is particularly prone to growth in one type of region, that is, the less developed areas that rely on transfer payments. It is precisely because of the reliance on transfer payments that the impulse to expand the number of people in the system is particularly strong. After all, having an extra mouth to eat, just adding a little bit to the number when "asking for money", is easier than developing the industry, and the local people will not feel pain, and it can also solve a job by the way.

▲ The official compilation is connected to the supernumerary editor (picture/network)

In 2021, China Youth Daily focused on Foping County, Shaanxi Province, which has only 30,000 people. The report mentioned that as of the end of 2020, there were 2,194 employees in the county of various establishments, and the administrative expenses of that year were 18.02 million yuan, ranking first in the expenditure.

In Foping County, there are 2,194 staff, and there are only 30,000 people in the county, and the "government-to-people ratio" has reached an astonishing 1:13, and an average of 13 people have to support one financial person.

And on a larger scale, there is also a trend towards this. According to the data, the recruitment scale of civil servants in most provinces will be expanded in 2023, and the scale of recruitment in four provinces (autonomous regions) of Gansu, Yunnan, Guangxi, and Inner Mongolia will exceed 50%. And these places are all large provinces that accept transfer payments.

In fact, there is a certain helplessness in the emergence of this situation. With limited wealth creation and pressure to keep jobs, expanding the size of the system, whether civil servants or casual workers, is a straightforward and quick way to do so.

But with common sense, you can figure out that there are endless troubles in doing so.

02

In County A, a township under its jurisdiction, the annual salary expenditure of temporary employees is about 450,000 yuan, accounting for 55% of the total public funds. Paying salaries to temporary workers alone has paid more than half of the public funds, so how much money is left for "development"?

Similarly, Foping County, which was interviewed by China Youth Daily, spent 18.02 million yuan on administrative expenses, accounting for 37 percent of the total annual expenditure, while that year's economic construction expenditure was 4.05 million yuan, less than a quarter of the former.

The direct consequence of the expansion of fiscal support personnel is that it takes up a large amount of public expenditure, leading to a lack of investment in other areas. Then, it falls into a vicious circle: expanding the scale of the system - taking up social input - weak economic development - serious employment problems - continuing to expand the scale...

And for those who have entered the system, I am afraid it does not mean that the years are quiet.

In 2019, a netizen "Lele" who claimed to belong to Baoying County, Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province, left a message on the "Message to the Mayor" channel on the website of the Yangzhou Municipal People's Government, asking whether it was a violation of discipline for civil servants to deliver food on weekends due to high pressure in life, which attracted widespread attention.

Figure/Network

I am afraid that civil servants who are "under great pressure in life" are not the only ones. As early as 2016, a deputy mayor of Anhui Province was given an administrative warning for driving an online ride-hailing service during working hours.

In recent years, rumors about the so-called "standardized adjustment of allowances and subsidies" and "wage reduction" for civil servants have been heard endlessly. However, some localities with weak financial capacity have already begun to ponder downsizing.

For example, Shanxi Province, which was the first to carry out the pilot of institutional reform in counties with small populations, has already taken specific measures:

In Hequ County, Xinzhou City, 36 party and government institutions were reduced to 22, 135 leadership positions were reduced to 114, 186 institutions involved in reform were integrated into 40, and 1,964 institutions were reduced to 659;

In Loufan County, Taiyuan City, the number of 9 county party committees in the county has been reduced to 6, the number of 26 government departments has been reduced to 16, and the number of 133 public institutions has been reduced to 29, and so on.

This is not surprising.

Finances are limited, and if there are too many people, there will certainly not be enough points, and when the pressure accumulates to a certain extent, even the personnel in the system who have "gone ashore" will not be absolutely safe.

03

However, on a larger scale, institutional downsizing and downsizing are not yet common. The trend of institutional expansion has not fundamentally changed, and the pressure of tight fiscal pressure is likely to persist.

At 18 o'clock on October 24 this year, the registration for the 2024 National Civil Service Examination will end. According to the State Civil Service Bureau, a total of 3.033 million people passed the qualification examination of the recruiting unit, and the number of applicants exceeded 3 million for the first time.

Moreover, the number of positions recruited for the 2024 national examination increased by 1,293 compared with the same period of the previous year, and the number of recruits also reached a record high, with an increase of 2,461 over the same period of the previous year, an increase of nearly 7% - this is also the sixth consecutive year that the national examination has expanded.

The number of applicants for the national examination, the expansion of the national examination for the sixth consecutive year, and the expanding number of temporary employees in County A are isomorphic: too many people want to enter the system, hoping to be included in the financial plate and get a "stable" job.

But there is no constant stability in the world, everything is a matter of time.

These overwhelmed counties just focused on the consequences and showed them in advance. These temporary workers, who are not even civil servants, have become a burden that cannot be shaken off. Whether they have any relationship, favors, or relatives of whom, in a small county that is close to a society of acquaintances, it is completely conceivable how tricky this kind of thing is.

In the report of Banyuetan, some details are very interesting.

Judging from their attitude of taking the initiative to raise the problem, some leading cadres have no good way to stand it, and can only hope that the media can help solve it.

This is still the case for temporary workers, not to mention other groups with "more iron jobs"? Now that the county is encountering this kind of problem, to what extent will it expand in the future?

Photo/Glacier

For some areas, the point has come to the point where the knife has to be used. On October 24, the Ministry of Finance announced the fiscal revenue and expenditure for the first three quarters of 2023. In the first three quarters of this year, the national general public budget revenue 166713 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.9 percent. This cumulative growth rate has been narrowing since June, falling below double digits for the first time in the first three quarters.

The slowdown in the growth of fiscal revenue will inevitably affect the strength of transfer payments. At this time, if the number of financial supporters is still growing, where will the wages come from? Where is there a treasure chest with the funds that are coming soon?

To put it mildly, those places where finances are tight should quickly downsizing and form stronger fiscal constraints, so that public expenditures, administrative costs, and local debts can be reduced, and temporary workers should not be "hired as they want". Learning to live a tight life is not an attitude, but a must.

In a big way, society should focus on forming a wealth-creating mechanism, reduce the burden on enterprises, encourage the development of the industry, and guide people, especially young people, to enter the field of wealth creation.

To put it in layman's terms, it is "making money".

Fundamentally, the tight fiscal situation can only be solved by a more active economy and more abundant financial resources. No matter how delicate the knife technique is used to divide the cake, it cannot change the fact that the cake is limited, and making the cake bigger is the better way.

It's simple, but it's hard to do. But the situation is pressing in front of us, and there are some passes, so I can only grit my teeth and rush through.