The public workforce is an important sector of employment in many cities, but communities across the U.S. do not have uniform rates of public employment—there is quite a bit of variation, a new report has found.

The report, "Public Sector Employment and its Role in Local Economic Development," was released this month from the Urban Institute. It took a close look at the role of the public sector as an employer or direct support of jobs, and tried to illustrate the extent that public sector employment can be a force in creating and inducing economic growth in cities.

"Direct employment is not the only way in which government spending influences local employment," the report said. "To capture this, we created a publicly driven employment index that includes both direct government jobs (federal, state, local, and military) and jobs in sectors that receive substantial public funding (education, social services, and health care).