Here's a fairly simple question w/major implications: how many people are currently employed by the City of Philadelphia? What is the ratio of city employees to city residents, and has this ratio changed since the 1950s?

This has been alluded to elsewhere, but much of the City's infrastructure configured based on a city w/2,000,000 residents, rather than the ~1,500,000 residents currently living in Philadelphia. If we're still employing people to service 500,000 more residents than actually exist, it suggests an obvious place to cut costs.

Of course, when you talk about cutting jobs, that brings union contracts into the discussion. And whose ox gets gored, so to speak.

Thoughts? Does anyone have some hard numbers on this?

-Z