We had some good economic news today: The economy added 200,000 jobs, and unemployment ticked down to 8.5 percent. We do seem to be slowly working our way out of the recession, and growth is even picking up year-over-year.

One thing I can’t help but notice in every monthly jobs report, though, is that we’re continue to slow down our recovery with public-sector job cuts. In fact, while private-sector hiring improved in 2011, public-sector layoffs got worse.

If we had stopped public-sector layoffs, we’d have at least 280,000 more jobs right now, and almost certainly more. Why more? Because each of those 280,000 workers would be contributing to the economy, increasing consumer demand and thus providing an impetus for even more private-sector hiring.

I’m glad our recovery is starting to speed up. But it would go a lot faster if we didn’t have one foot on the gas and the other on the break.