Government Is Where Employment Growth Is

If you were to compare nonfarm employment across the U.S. economy for November 2023 versus November 2022 and for October 2023 versus October 2022 you would find that Government is the leading source of jobs creation, not the Private sector. This is interesting because the Government does not produce a single Dollar of revenue, rather, it subsists by taxing the American people, either directly through various taxes (income, property, excise, etc.) or indirectly via the inflation tax.  

The Big Lie. When the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases employment numbers each month and the Biden Administration as well as the Federal Reserve tout those numbers as being indictive of a strong economy and a strong labor market, you may take comfort in knowing that you are being lied to:

• Total U.S. nonfarm payroll employment across all industry sectors grew a bit less than 2% year-over-year for both the months of November and October (December data won’t be released until the 3^rd week of January). See the table below.

  • The “Government” sector grew slightly more than 2% over the same periods.

  • The “Education and Health Services” supersector grew by approximately 5% over the same periods. (The “Education” portion includes the public education sector. The “Health Services” portion includes Government subsidies. Therefore, the Federal Government represents a significant portion of this supersector).

• If you were to strip out the positive impact of the “Government” and “Education and Health Services” sectors, total nonfarm payroll employment would be cut in half to only 1%.

• If you were to combine the “Education and Health Services” supersector with the “Government” sector, the combination would account for 60% of jobs added year-over-year for the month of November and 58% of jobs added year-over-year for the month of October.

• Further, these two sectors – “Education and Health Services” and “Government” – account for a significant portion of total U.S. employment with a 16% and 15% employment contribution respectively.

• Ramping up hiring of Government sector employees to offset softness in the Private sector does not qualify as economic strength.

• Premium subscribers may access the full spreadsheet detail behind the summary table below.