I believe you are mistaken here. Federal hiring may be level or modest. But what is going on in government hiring on the state, county and city levels? You should try and find hiring stats for New York City. It must be way up under their current commie mayor.
How about hiring by states like Maryland, Virginia, Massachusetts? They must be up too.
Your two graphs do not contradict each other because one deals with Federal hiring and the other with ALL government hiring in America
So you're not letting the fact that you don't know get in the way of having a firm opinion. Like most people (me included). Of course when it comes to money stuff I go and put in the effort to check things out before I start throwing my money in but when I'm just sitting back w/ political banter --aw hell, studies show that over 79% of that stuff in the past two years was totally made up.
fwiw [opening bell serious time]