The Hidden Gem In April’s Jobs Report

When the federal government released its jobs report for April, even the die-hard Trump-hating media had to admit that the gain “beat expectations.” Economists had expected just 65,000, not the 115,000 reported.

But the jobs report is even better than advertised, because it included a loss of 9,000 federal workers.   

That wasn’t how mainstream news outlets covered the report. They were busy on Friday, warning about “several red flags” and that “the solid-looking topline employment numbers mask underlying weakness in the labor market.”

Given the inability of these “experts” to forecast anything accurately, especially when President Donald Trump is in office, we will take those “red flags” with a substantial grain of salt.

What can’t be denied, however, is that Trump is making good on this goal of shrinking the size of the federal workforce.

Yes, the protests against federal jobs cuts are long over (they were, what, seven protest topics ago?), but the cuts keep coming.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that in every month but one since Trump took office, the number of federal workers has declined. And the increase in February of this year was due to the Postal Service hiring people. Not counting postal workers, nearly a thousand federal workers lost their jobs.

So far this year, the federal workforce has shrunk by 57,000 workers (nearly 59,000 if you exclude postal workers).

Since Trump took office, the federal workforce has been downsized by 345,000.

As a result, there are fewer people employed by the federal government today than at any time since 1966.

Fewer federal workers means less money spent on some of the least productive, most overpaid people in the country.

But even so, if the federal workforce has shrunk so sharply, why is federal spending through the roof?

That’s because roughly two-thirds of federal spending these days is in the form of entitlement checks – for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, housing subsidies, college subsidies, etc., etc.

Nevertheless, laying off federal workers is a welcome start.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board