Federal government slashed 172,000 jobs in 3 months, Private Sector gained 225,000, the most since May.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Federal government civilian headcount got slashed by 162,000 in October and by 172,000 over the three months of September, October, and November, according to the delayed nonfarm payroll report for November, with backfilled data for October, released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as part of its “establishments survey.”
These federal government job cuts in October include those people who took the voluntary “deferred resignation” deal in the spring under the Trump administration’s buyout program, but who, as part of the deal, remained on the government payroll through September (discussed here on October 3). These voluntary departures were in addition to other layoffs, firings, and early retirements across agencies.
Since January, the federal government has slashed its civilian employment by 258,000, or by 8.6%. And it did move the needle of overall employment growth.
But job growth in the private sector increased from the low point this summer. In November, private-sector nonfarm payrolls rose by 69,000 jobs from the backfilled figure for October (blue columns).
Over the September through November period, the private sector added 225,000 jobs, which pushed the three-month average job growth in November to 75,000, the highest since May (red line).
Government payrolls don’t include workers at government contractors that have lost their jobs due to cancellation of government contracts. They’re reflected in the private-sector jobs count here, such as in “Professional and business services,” where there have been some declines this year.
It’s not the Fed’s job to worry about employment growth at the federal government. The Fed needs to look at private sector jobs and not get distracted by federal government job cuts and their impact on the unemployment rate. It needs to look at this:
This is still fairly anemic job growth in the private sector, but it’s improving job growth after the low point this summer, and it is far better than total nonfarm payrolls that have gotten pushed into the negative for three months this year, and deeply so in October by the federal government’s job cuts of 162,000.
Total nonfarm payrolls, including government employment, rose by 64,000 in November from the backfilled figure for October.
But October had been hit with the 162,000 federal government job cuts, which pushed October job growth into the negative (-105,000).
The three-month average job gain rose to 22,000 in November from a drop in October.
Civilian employment at the federal government has dropped by 258,000 this year through November, to 2.74 million, the lowest since late 2014. Note the plunge in October:
The share of civilian federal employment dropped to 1.72% of total nonfarm employment, the lowest in the data going back to 1939.
Average hourly earnings inched up by 0.14% in November from the backfilled data for October (+1.6% annualized).
The backfilled October data had jumped by 0.44% from September (+4.25% annualized), the most since August 2024.
The three-month average hourly earnings rose by 3.1% annualized and has zigzagged in this range all year.
Year-over-year, average hourly earnings rose by 3.5% in November.
The Household Survey data in the Jobs Report.
During the government shutdown in October, the surveys of households were not conducted, and there is no data for October: no data for total employment, unemployment, the labor force, the unemployment rate, the employment-to-population ratio, participation rates, etc. They’re all blanks for October.
The November surveys were conducted, so there is data for November. But this November data too came with big caveats from the BLS, including, “It is not possible to precisely quantify the effect of the federal government shutdown on household survey estimates for November.”
The metrics below are all based on the Household Survey. So we’ll proceed with care and highlight just a few of them.
The number of unemployed jumped to 7.83 million in November, up by 228,000 in the two months since September (no data for October).
Federal government workers who came off the payrolls during this period as part of the government’s headcount reduction and then counted as unemployed powered this 228,000 two-month jump in unemployment.
The unemployment rate, powered in part by the newly unemployed former federal government workers, rose to 4.56% in November from 4.44% in September. While this rate is still historically low, it’s quite a bit higher than it had been in recent years.
The unemployment rate reflects the number of unemployed people who are actively looking for a job divided by the labor force (people working or looking for a job).
The prime-age labor force participation rate (25-to-54-year-olds) ticked up to 83.8% in November, from 83.7% in September (no data for October), which is historically high.
The prime-age labor force participation rate eliminates the issue of the retiring boomers. The labor force participation rate shows the percentage of the population that either has a job or is looking for a job. When people retire and stop looking for a job, they exit the labor force but remain in the population until they die. The surge of boomer retirements, which started about 15 years ago, has pushed down the overall labor force participation rate, as these retired boomers – those that are still around – are still in the population but no longer in the labor force.
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This is encouraging news. We could certainly do with fewer Federal government employees. Shift that human capital towards construction work, plumbing, roofing, farming – heck, even coal mining since now that the AI data centers will be firing up the old coal turbines again.
I’m looking forward to the day where over half the government bureaucrat jobs are replaced with AI. Ideally this happens within the next six months.
There is nothing wrong with good government employees. Just like private sector, there is definitely fat that should always be trimmed.
Even staunch fiscal conservative economists know it makes sense to centralize some services (now maybe that shouldn’t be federal). We don’t need two sets of water main and sewer laterals. That would be inefficient. We can get private sector benefits by bidding out the actual construction work of those systems, but administration being central is fine. It’s a functional monopoly, so privatizing has zero benefit.
As if there aren’t mid-level/upper-level managers in private industry that we’ve allowed to grow to bloated practical monopolies that are fat little piggies collecting equity grants/options off a company that was built by the real hard workers 100 years ago.
Hey add some private companies to do their work for triple the cost while you are at it.
Super smart! 💡
Are you sure? When you add the massive costs of benefits and pensions of government workers.
However unlike the private sector the public sector seldom cuts out deadwood, excess, nor is it fast on the uptake for adopting technology. USPS and IRS just two examples.
Two great examples of Congress purposely crippling a government agency.
Kurtis– thank you for pointing out the reality!
That’ll give everyone even more opportunity to complain about how much government services suck. The neverending cycle: government sucks so let’s fire people, oh hey, now government sucks more!
Imagine if we applied this logic to all businesses and organizations! The fire department is not doing a great job putting out fires so let’s fire them all!
I prefer the libertarian paradise where there is a bronze, silver, or gold fire department subscription just like ACA plans :)
“The fire department is not doing a great job putting out fires so let’s fire them all!”
Not a great choice of examples.
There is a reason why the head of the Fireman’s Union is welded at the hip to Democratic Party Presidential candidates – the politicians want to share the MSM-exaggerated halo and the Union head wants political cover for excessive compensation system wide.
1) As to the latter (ladder?), look into the total compensation of Firemen in metros once beyond their short probationary periods – I think you’ll be pretty surprised.
2) Divide that number by the actual number of *fire* calls said firemen go to in a year – again, you’ll be surprised by the number (related note – ever wonder why fire trucks not infrequently show up at non-fire, EMT type incidents – contemplate why)
3) Periodically, there *are* high risk, mass casualty events that fire departments respond to – but are the specific firemen actually perhaps putting their lives in danger (every 4-5 years) the ones being compensated the most – or does the Union as a whole spread a whole lotta money over a much larger number of people.
Every sacred cow bears *some* examination, otherwise systemic abuses get seeded, entrenched, and ultimately almost impossible to root out.
I don’t know about your town, but here, the SF Fire Department also provides the ambulance services through its Emergency Medical Services division. So if you call 911 because you think you’re having a heart attack, it’s the SFFD ambulance that arrives, and it’s loaded up with equipment. There is also a private ambulance service in old vans, and I’m not sure what they do. This is why these departments are often called “first responders” — because they have to respond to all kinds of stuff. So when you do your calculations, you need to include that activity.
Not talking about ambulances…talking about fire *trucks* on scene with no fires in evidence.
Not saying that every time I’ve seen an EMT vehicle it is accompanied by a fire truck.
But in various metros around the US, I have see multiple instances of fire *trucks* responding to incidents with no evidence of fire – current or prior.
Perhaps that is “policy” for a given metro – but all that does is shift the debate to *why* it is policy.
It is a lot easier to justify ever higher fire budgets (in a world with likely fewer fires due to improved materials and automated response systems) if the number of vaguely defined “responses” is artificially inflated.
Major, multiple alarm fires still occur – but with decreasing frequency.
SFFD has trucks that respond to accidents of all kinds with no fire. They’re smaller trucks than the big ladder trucks, and have medical equipment on board, (lean-against-the-wall) ladders, firefighting equipment, including for vehicle fires, jaws-of-life equipment, other rescue equipment, etc., to respond to whatever crisis, and their teams are trained in medical emergencies. But they’re not ambulances and cannot haul stretchers around. They’re often the first to show up at an accident and will call an SFFD ambulance if needed. If you see a person collapse on the sidewalk, and you call 911, that’s the truck that will show within like 2 minutes and provide the initial medical help. These trucks are in fire stations in every neighborhood.
Tsk Tsk, you know better…
No cherry picking on job cuts when it does not fit narrative.
Carlos – gov’t employees have a serious PR problem: They are less competent and more rude than other people.
That’s why so many people hate them.
Had a serious competency problem with a gov’t website just last week, that cost me about 9 hours of time, for a 5 minute task.
Had similar problem a gov’t employee a few months ago.
You seem to be unaware of the problem with gov’t employees.
I can say identical things about every big company in America: Comcast, CVS, AT&T, Amazon, etc.
Customer service is non existent. Easy problems take forever to solve; hard problems are never solved. Employees are non responsive. Business models are designed to screw people over.
In all honesty, I have better interactions with government agencies than big private companies. Hands down.
Big bureaucracies suck regardless of whether they’re public or private sector.
At least the private sector has competition. I can choose to give my business to small mom-n-pop websites rather than Amazon, but I can’t exactly “take my business elsewhere” when it comes to the gov’t.
Yeah? Which alternative to Comcast should I choose, nothing or nothing? How about phone service? The big ones that suck or the little ones that are useless?
Well, I wasn’t defending big companies. I couldn’t do that.
That’s mostly because the interaction with big companies used to be a lot better, and has now become a bad as gov’t always has been for a long time.
“Which alternative to Comcast should I choose, nothing or nothing?”
Of course the choices are different everywhere – but by me I have Comcast, RCN, and Fidium for internet options.
Fidium is new and keep trying to get me to switch, but I’ve stayed with comcast because a) it’s only $60/mo for basic internet, b) they have a retail location right down the street so I never have to call and wait on hold, and c) Fidium won’t let me use my own modem which is a dealbreaker for me.
Unlike my ISP, there’s only one choice of municipal government that I can “subscribe to” for trash removal, road maintenance etc.. They are are monopoly by definition.
MS, how did you measure this? Otherwise it’s just anecdotal.
“cost me about 9 hours of time, for a 5 minute task”
Reminds me of the time it took >6 hours on hold to reset my TreasuryDirect password.
Don’t forget that password folks…
There is some value in distinguishing between Federal, state, and local government employees.
There are only about 3 million Federal employees (averaging Biden’s vote-buying boom and Trump’s vote-buying bust).
But a whopping 15 million or so local government employees, with a *much* smaller scope of responsibility on average.
In terms of taxpayer/dollar saver money out the door, it might be worthwhile to focus quite a bit more on that 15 million number.
You mean teachers, firemen, police, and healthcare workers?
This comes up every freaking time.
Numbers,
Yep – that is exactly who I mean – including the large administrative personnel overhead for all the numerous positions you just listed.
15 million is pretty close to 1 out of every 10 jobs in the US – so some scrutiny of the details is warranted.
(And we ain’t counting *state* employees yet).
Private industry will replace employees much faster than gov’t will.
With even worse options: even dumber employees with dumber scripts that they aren’t allowed to deviate from. Or worse yet, AI, which can only solve the easy problems I can solve myself but not the tricky problems I actually need help with.
“I’m looking forward to the day where over half the government bureaucrat jobs are replaced with AI. Ideally this happens within the next six months.”
Oooh, can we? I’m a federal worker trying to order supplies for my lab. Current administration inserted another layer of bureaucrats in the approval chain, and my P.R. is stuck with them, and we’re conditioned to be afraid to ask them what’s the hold-up. AI would have approved it or rejected it already, and would not get offended if asked for more info. And you say this is happening in the next six months? Oooh, goodie!
You’re not wrong on the AI shift. You are wrong about how and why the cuts got us to where we are today with the Trump admin. People can’t appreciate what they don’t see or know. What you wish for will also happen to private sector in white collar sector mainly, i.e. the high paying jobs.
duh ! okay you seem like an intellectual giant from your analysis of the situation. I see proud MAGA hat wearing human beings taking refuge in the God blessed right of all Americans to be wrong while commingling as an important part of the community.
I have an artist in my family that paints a view of the world that I would never have noticed.
The problem is the artist is different, usually shockingly so.
It’s amazing, isn’t it? The Federal government issues job cuts within its ranks. Then the Federal government points to decreasing job openings and increasing unemployment as a reason for cutting interest rates.
Why is this fooling so many people and institutions? Thank you, Wolf, for pointing out what should be obvious. I just cannot wrap my head around why, with historical low unemployment relative to the 70s, 80s, 90s, etc., that the Fed is weighing the employment side of its mandate so heavily relative to inflation. The excesses in the market, including BS jobs, need to be wrung out. Unfortunately, that only can happen with company closures.
It’s has to do with liquidity, bank reserves, and the ridiculous interest on our govt debt! Don’t be fooled into thinking the Fed is independent and cares about “the people”. We haven’t been anywhere near inflation target in 5 years! Once the printer goes brrrrr, the fed has to keep it going to some extent. Imagine if rates were 2x where they are and probably need to be. 2T in interest payments plus everything rolling over in 2026 at that rate…. Yikes! Also, just imagine if we had a massive recession or depression! We are already spending like we are so certainly can’t afford for that to happen…
“I just cannot wrap my head around why, with historical low unemployment relative to the 70s, 80s, 90s, etc., that the Fed is weighing the employment side of its mandate so heavily relative to inflation.”
It’s easy once you realize the FED has one mandate – the wealth effect. They want to pump asset prices as high as possible. Sure, they’ll pay lip service to “jobs” and “inflation,” but that’s just political cover.
The FED cherrypicks which data they want to cite as justification for their continued inflation entrenchment/asset hyperbubble operation.
It’s the velocity of change, historically when the unemployment rate changes up by.3% or .4%(I thinks it’s.3%) a recession has always followed. The unemployment rate got so low post COVID with free money that the unemployment rate is really a revision to mean in my opinion and not indicative of a future recession. I was surprised today; wage growth came in lower than expected, it’s been trending higher until now. Keep an eye on wage growth. Cheers
They are pushing on a string now. Powell admitted they can’t do anything about housing affordability but he thinks lowering rates will help the employment situation which is doubtful. They can help inflation by lowering the assets pump, but like you say they won’t do that.
I agree with Ryan that a big factor is interest payments on the debt.
IMHO – the Fed is responding to Trump’s concern that the interest payments could be used for other items.
This is the early stages of the debt crisis, where we have to lower interest rates to keep the interest cost of the debt down, but lower interest rates causes inflation, which will later cause investors to demand higher interest on their U.S. bonds, or they just won’t buy U.S. bonds anymore. Then the Fed has to fill the gap with QE and money printing, which causes inflation, and investors want even higher rates. It’s a death spiral for the USD. At some point the gov’t 1) renounces the debt 2) inflates “the hell’ out of the USD by at least 100-fold, which effectively inflates-away the debt or 3) sells Fort Knox to pay down the debt (assuming we have that much gold).
IMHO- renouncing the debt appears to be not the plan. It might be that 2) brings the price of gold up enough for 3) to be realistic.
“IMHO- renouncing the debt appears to be not the plan.
Hmmm…terminally debauching the currency (QE inflation) to enable unsustainable G spending levels is in effect “renouncing the debt”.
Those are 2 different formal techniques of getting to the same result.
Well since you opened the door too a discussion about what the Federal government should be I am currently thinking are the very thing Trump is dismantling.
The US was not in crisis when Trump came in but since then we seem to be hurtling toward destructive policy rather than the forgotten meme, global warming.
Since the video game warriors have gained supremacy in the planning of the future. Fuck global warming, the need for the current AI models to only have a chance of becoming more than a nuisance is to surveil the population.
I have 25 year old AI models, while primitive, exhibit similar characteristics to the current commercial prototypes.
Wolf!! Admin reports 2 million native born workers have been hired since January. I saw a tweet from an economist that native born total employment has dropped off since last year. Who should we trust? What do you think?
What is this stupid obsession with “native born” and “foreign born”???? I’m foreign born, Musk is, the CEOs of a bunch of the big tech companies are. All of them are legally in the US and are US citizens.
May be one fueled the other. A laid off gov employee has to do some job – and it increases private sector jobs when they work on a 7 eleven shop.
So these employees tried to find something else – 1/2-2/3 succeeded other 1/2-1/3 failed
There is no shock like being laid off and out of work for a couple of years, I admit that being a miner has historically had it’s own understanding about the customs that the culture had developed over the centuries.
Agree. I care if citizens pay taxes and contribute to the productivity of the USA. Many of our great grandfathers weren’t born here. (Me included) How quickly we forget that few of us are truly natives and being a true Native American has been incredibly difficult.
I’d like you to weigh in on the long term effect when the Fed justifies dropping interest rates with “false” readings on unemployment like this. All the pundits are predicting further rate cuts in 2026 but I don’t get it. Core inflation isn’t getting to the target rate and now every time the Fed cuts, it drives the 30 yr rates up. Yes I’ve RTFA (all of them) but what is your take if the Fed continues to give so much weight to these employment stats and the pressures from Trump?
Well, my grand parents escaped the English genocide in Ireland by migrating to the USA.
Where they were deemed as papist terrorists.
Wolf – we appreciate you, but I think “Ram” is wrong with the comment on “foreign born”.
His comment would be more correct about “illegals”.
That’s the problem. Illegals taking jobs here. They have no legal right to be here, much less be employed here.
In contrast, Canada takes work permits very seriously. Because of a problem with the computer records on my work permit, I was nearly sent back to the U.S. on the next return flight. The CBP woman was even mocking me to my face. Other nations protect their labor market quite vigorously. I had to call our Canadian CEO to get it straightened out.
The BLS doesn’t have monthly jobs data on “illegal immigrants.” No one does. But it has “native born” and “foreign born,” just like it has categories by race, sex, age, etc. There is an obsession at Zero Hedge about native-born v. foreign-born, with a two-colored chart, equating it subliminally with “American” v. “illegal immigrant.” And it’s the subliminal stuff that people grab and run with.
How are “illegals” taking everyone’s jobs if unemployment has been historically low and prime age employment has been historically high? The only jobs they’ve been taking are the ones “native born” Americans are too lazy or proud to do.
So gullible.
Considering that less than a million new jobs have been created since January, it’s probably a lie.
This report does add one more data point to the low hire low fire story Wolf pointed out recently. Year over year change in employment is only a million (lowest since the Great Recession except for the COVID anomaly), but no uptick in unemployment claims at all.
One possible explanation is that we’ve totally killed all population growth. If the population isn’t increasing, you don’t need new jobs, so you can have low job growth without unemployment.
I’m looking forward to seeing the official census figures next year. I wouldn’t be surprised to see population growth under 1 million or possibly even lower.
Also adding that prime age employment rate hasn’t dropped at all yet (80.6%, higher than almost all of US history except 1997-2001)
The government has been sending out warnings of lower population growth already this year. The CBO reported that deaths will outpace births in the US by 2033.. earlier than expected. All world population projections are tailing lower than projected 20 years ago. We are seeing the S curve of human population growth flatten before our eyes.
It’s not “human population growth” that’s flattening, but rather “western” population growth.
India and parts of Africa are still in the exponential growth phase.
It’s nearly global, except Africa and some small countries elsewhere. Even in India, the fertility rate has fallen below the replacement rate.
if the population isn’t increasing, you don’t need new jobs, so you can have low job growth without unemployment. -i
An exact illogical misinterpretation of the facts that we have become accustomed which means being familiar with something through repeated experience or being in the habit of doing something.
The worst statistic in the best of times is the labor measurement.
Wildly inaccurate but laden with the burden of love.
I retried from the USG just a few years ago and most of the folks I worked with at that time were eligible for retirement (many long past their initial eligibility date) or nearly so. With the Trump cuts, hiring freezes, boomers aging, etc. there will a huge need for federal employees (just to maintain staff, forget expansion). Trump may put a damper on hiring, but once he departs, the flood gates will open. A great opportunity for new/younger employees, there will be promotion opportunities aplenty for decades to come.
The old people have houses priced in old prices. Gov wont pay what it takes for new people to buy one.
Also having an economy where most of the good paying jobs are funded by the government isn’t working out so well.
Having been a State Employee in the Education realm I hope you are wrong. You and I know how blatant and self-serving it is in Federal, State, and Local government. How could you say this is good? I say contract out much of what is done now to private enterprise. 100k gardeners (salary, medical, especially retirement plan included) must stop. It use to be Civil Servants, now it is government petty master of the people.
Is there a government shop where the gardener isn’t already a contractor? I’m a fed, and all our physical-plant type workers are already contractors. And they’re a mixed bag, sometimes being very on-point and taking our concerns seriously, other times being slow to respond to an issue with the building or grounds. Our professionals (e.g. chemists, biologists) can be contractors, and they are easier to hire and fire, but they are a lot more expensive, like twice as expensive relative to government FTEs. They don’t see that in their salaries of course. Their contracting companies take a big cut. So maybe your 100k gardener exists, and he’s already a contractor.
I think your right, like I did, unemployed with 3 kids, I applied and they gave me a job.
Federal employment back to 2015 levels & the lowest GovJob/NFPay since 1939. And the economy hasn’t rolled over. That ain’t bad.
That past year’s payroll changes does not look good. I can see why The Fed is getting a bit spooked.
I think AI will shrink the Federal Government quite a bit. It might take several years but it’s already starting.
They will be the last ones to implement it. The gov’t is never about efficiency.
And they will be banned from doing it like the IRS has been from offering online tax returns.
How would so-called ‘AI’ in any way shrink the federal government?
Well you are just the kind of thinkers that are thinking correctly about AI, that it is not ready for prime time. And just the kind of thinkers that will be reticent in their evaluation of the quality of life in the USA. Which is pretty good.
I think you are wrong. AI is like a puppy needing continuous attention. And like the spectacular dog she was destined to be, she was never able to master the art of deception required of human beings
That yoy wage growth and prime age labor force participation is why inflation is sticky and here for the long haul.
A poster predicted that the government job cuts would be part of the consideration and rationale for rate cuts.
The unemployment rate rose to the highest level since late 2016/early 2017 – if you exclude the Covid era, where many people did not have to work and instead where subsidized by the government. A lot of people are having are hard time weaning off Biden era subsidies – student loans, continuous mortgage workouts, ACA subsidies, all kinds of grants and tax credits for their special interest groups. Some of them are forced back into the labor force. Republicans fell into the trap Democrats laid out for them and will get hammered in the midterm elections. The only thing Trump can do to soften that blow is to issue government handouts to everyone. The Fed will have to start printing to keep the government solvent.
No. The US CONGRESS will have to raise taxes significantly if it ‘can’t’ cut spending in order to remain solvent. The Federal Reserve doesn’t need to do anything at all as this is not its problem.
While Republicans cut taxes, Democrats raise taxes on labor (carving out exemptions for their voters). None of them dares to tax the sacred cow of capitalism: capital gains, and so nothing will change.
It’s almost as if both parties were controlled by the same special interests to keep the working class divided…..
“None of them dares to tax the sacred cow of capitalism: capital gains, and so nothing will change.”
I can assure you I pay plenty of taxes on both realized (stocks) and unrealized (housing) capital gains.
The unemployment rate has increased, increases in hourly earnings have slowed, and overall job gains are low. Not overly comforting.
…and inflation is still raging, and no branch of the government cares or wants to do anything about it. When asked about it, they lie (e.g. Powell, Trump).
Not at all comforting.
Washington State is going to AI for it’s 911 call center. So when you get slammed by some drunk hit & run lunatic and are laying on the road and call 911, look forward to talking to “Kara” a machine with a sweet voice, and going through 15 minutes of questions and no answers. The State is laying off all nearly all of it’s human operators and saving money.
This is what anti-government types want! Several commenters in this thread are specifically asking for this! Sounds like hell on earth to me, but what do I know?
How many calls to 911 are for an actual emergency? Perhaps AI can help the human operators spend less time answering butt dials and prank calls and more time answering actual emergencies.
NB: about a decade ago, I had a smartphone that would regularly pocket-dial 911, quite literally while the screen was locked and the phone was in my pocket. I always felt a little guilty about it but learned it was a common occurance.
There is tremendous waste in the government. True there are dedicated government employees providing valuable services, but the government has become extremely bloated and unmanageable. Many departments serve no valuable function and indeed subtract from the welfare of the country. If we don’t get a handle on the national debt our national security is at risk. Trump is addressing it but I wish he was doing more. As someone mentioned earlier if a Democrat wins in 2028, they would reverse any progress made under the current administration. The danger of out of control debt is barely discussed in the so called legacy media. In recent years the truth has come out regarding the reckless programs and spending and harmful misinformation of many government agencies. I hope the trust in the Federal Government can be regained.
Please elaborate, how is Trump addressing the national debt?
“Trump is addressing it”
By cutting taxes? That’s the opposite of addressing it.
“harmful misinformation of many government agencies”
“Misinformation” like “you should vaccinate your kids”? Yeah don’t worry, they are addressing that.
How about military jobs? They are federal payroll jobs. Are they even counted in these reports?
Civilian employees of the Department of War are counted. Members of the military are not counted here.
We need a Coolidge 2.0 presidency…
Wolf,
Excellent, comprehensive article on employment. Thank you.
I got a kick out of the caveat/clarification: “…as these retired boomers – THOSE THAT ARE STILL AROUND – are still in the population but no longer in the labor force.”
I am one of those “still around”.
I guess for clarity, we need to make sure readers understand that the government isn’t counting dead boomers. LOL
How do you reason it’s not the Feds job to worry about the number of jobs in the Federal Govt? Sounds to me like that is by definition their concern.
The Federal Reserve has nothing to do with any decisions by the administration to hire and fire federal employees. A big part of the Fed — the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks — is a private organization, and all their employees are private sector employees. Only the Federal Reserve Board of Governors is a federal agency. Monetary policy decisions by the Fed to boost the labor market are strictly directly at the private sector. They idea of lowering interest rates is to boost demand in the economy.
Some random, unorganized unfocused thoughts:
I do think it important to understand / separate out the numbers related to undocumented immigrants leaving jobs because they are deported / self deporting / or just “laying low”. The country voted to take a significant action to reduce the numbers of undocumented individuals – Fed policy is not going to counter a reduction of 500k-750k in the labor force in the last 11 months that is a directed action being done on purpose by ICE etc..
I know this is not tracked – foreign born is NOT the same. I am just stating from a economic policy position, it would seem to me the Fed should look at the economy without the effects of government and undocumented employment – at least to a certain degree.
I will add, I have two houses – one in an area of a high number of undocumented immigrants and the other where there is nearly none. Those jobs “that Americans will not do” seem to get done in the second area. Fast food places have more high school/ college kids. Farms might have a little more machinery. Painting crews are smaller but seem to do a better and more productive job. Construction gets done on schedule. Yard work gets done by the neighbor that just retired and is looking for something to do.
Any drastic change in the availability of a local work force will have a short term impact. People will not fill those jobs overnight. Some one else needs to explain if a reduction of 0.4% in the workforce over the course of 2025 due to undocumented immigrants leaving is significant to the economy even if it “makes the numbers look bad”.
Finally it seems 20% of the nation is in a recession, 50% is ok and 30% is doing well ( I have seen different %, but I will use these for discussion). Is there a couple of specific reasons that can explain this difference?