If I remember correctly, he/she was right through much of the cycle, but I think the private sector has now surpassed the public sector.  The growth in government spending has slowed quite a bit and will likely continue to slow, given the partisan divide between Congress and the White House.  That's not incredibly odd, though.  If a governments opts for fiscal policy in pursuit of stabilization, then it would make sense to see faster growth in the public sector -- the logic, of course, being partly that people take employment in the public sector to stay afloat during downturns, and leave because of higher pay elsewhere or budget cuts, once recovery sets in.

The bit on the job growth with companies like Wal-Mart is (again, if I remember correctly) rubbish, though.  Most jobs created in the Dot-Com Boom were quite high-paying (middle- to upper-middle-class), and, while a significant number of jobs were lost when the bust arrived, the losses were not terribly great.  (The unemployment rate never went above 6%.  That's not bad at all, as recessions go.)

As I understand, a large chunk of job growth these days is coming in health care, education, and financial services -- again, jobs that tend to pay decent salaries.  Teachers typically start in the range of $30-50k, depending on the state.  Health care, obviously, contains a wide variety of jobs, ranging from the lower-middle- to the upper-class in salary.  And financial services tend to start in a similar range to teachers, but they, obviously, have a lot more growth potential.

All three of those areas are facing labor shortages, too, and pay, last I checked, was rising at very strong rates.

Wal-Mart will open a store here and there, but there's simply not much room left before running into overproduction.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!