Jobs Report and Government Waste
There are approximately 168 million people in the United States’ civilian labor force and 23 million of them are employed in Federal, state or local Government.
We don’t waste time on the jobs report as it is difficult to glean anything but high-level, directional insight as the collected data does not follow a real-time, real-world, rigorous collection process.
More important than the jobs data is the Labor Participation Rate and that figure has been essentially flat since March of 2023. The participation rate would be much higher in a productive society, not hovering in the 62-63% range.
The U.S. Government needs to shrink itself by extracting itself from the economy. As large as the United States economy is, if the people ripped “Social spend” (62 cents of every Dollar the Government wasted in 2023 went to one Social program or another), I have no doubt the U.S. could consistently grow Real GDP above 10% each year. Ripping out Social spend would be a GDP force multiplier.