RFK Calls Out The BLS Jobs Scam

By David Stockman, Special to The Kennedy Beacon

By David Stockman, Special to The Kennedy Beacon

(Republished with permission of the author)

RFK has an enormous repertoire of knowledge about a wide range of topics—so it is not surprising that he recently called out the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for another dubious monthly report that vastly exaggerated the strength of the jobs market. And this ability to incisively cut through the fog of routinized establishment propaganda is also why his candidacy is so refreshing and crucial to the future of democratic governance, personal liberty and main street prosperity in America.

The truth is, the approved and endlessly repeated narratives—from justifications for the Forever Wars, to table-pounding for the Clot Shots, to bipartisan White House boasts about a perennially Strong Economy—are threadbare and contrary to the facts almost without exception. Yet in a modern-day version of the Naked Emperor tale the screaming evidence that all is not copacetic on main street is completely blotted out by the Uniparty politicians and MSM media alike.

Thus, the monthly BLS jobs report is a routine occasion for the financial press to marvel about the “strength” of the US economy, but these juiced-up figures are not even remotely what they are cracked-up to be. Nor do they pass the smell test of logic and common sense.

For instance, since April 2023 the headline jobs count has allegedly risen by a robust 1.234 million, according to the ballyhooed establishment survey. But the number of people actually employed has only increased by 191,000, according to the BLS household survey. You don’t need to be either an economist or statistician, however, to understand that each of these 191,000 newly employed Americans were not holding down 6.5 jobs each!

Or as RFK queried:

Do you wonder why the economy doesn’t feel as good as government statistics say it is? Maybe it is because the BLS manipulates the statistics.

Needless to say, the monthly headline numbers (establishment survey) are not worth the paper they are printed on, and not just because they are heavily modeled, imputed, revised and guesstimated. It’s also because on any kind of reasonable trend basis focused on total hours worked rather than simple but misleading worker headcounts, employment growth has virtually ground to a halt.

Thus, during the 36 years between 1964 and the year 2000, the index of private sector hours worked grew by 2.0% per annum, thereby accounting for more than 50% of annual real GDP growth. By contrast, during the 23-years ending in October 2023, the gain was only 0.73% per year. That is, the true growth rate of employment has fallen by nearly two-thirds since the turn of the century.

Nor is that the half of it. When you look under the hood, it is evident that the quality of even this tepid rate of labor hours growth has also deteriorated sharply. For instance, the highest paid jobs in the US economy are in the goods-producing sector—manufacturing, construction, mining and energy— where the average weekly wage annualized is about $71,000. But when we look at the trend data for the two periods noted above, the contrast is even more starling.

During the half century between 1949 and the year 2000, the index of hours worked in the good-producing sector rose steadily, averaging about +0.50% annually through good times and bad. Since the year 2000, however, the average has gone consistently down-hill, getting progressively weaker with each turn of the business cycle. In all, hours worked in the highest paid sectors of the labor market have declined at a -0.73% per annum rate, and are now 15% lower than they were in October 2000.

Index of Hours Worked In the Good-Producing Sector, 2000 to 2023

By contrast, there has been some modest growth in the Leisure and Hospitality (L&H) sector since the year 2000, averaging about +0.88% per annum. And while all jobs contribute to economic growth and social well-being to some degree, the fact remains that all jobs are not remotely created equal. The average annualized wage in the heavily part-time, minimum wage-based L&H sector is just $24,000 per annum or barely one-third of the goods-producing sector.

In short, there is a reason the “economy doesn’t feel as good as government statistics say it is”. It just plain isn’t.

The US economy has been so badly crippled by inflation, debt, speculation and crony capitalist rent extractions that it simply is not generating good jobs at anything close to historical levels. And that’s to say nothing of foregoing the inherent capacity of free market capitalism to generate productive investment and rising living standards under a regime of sound money and honest government.

Index of Hours Worked In The Leisure And Hospitality Sector, 2000 to 2023

At the end of the day, the dead giveaway about the US economy’s failure to produce middle-class prosperity in recent decades is evident in the data for real median family income.  The latter grew by a steady and healthy 1.7% per annum during the period between 1954 and the year 2000.

Since the turn of the century, however, not so much. In fact, the growth rate has slowed sharply to 0.6% per annum or just 35% of its previous average.

There is no mystery as to why.  There has been a whole lot of fiscal stimulus and money-pumping during the last several decades, but it didn’t go into productive investment, good jobs or rising middle class incomes and living standards.

To the contrary, interest group domination of the Washington policy machinery and crony capitalist capture of vast unearned economic rents have fundamentally debilitated the American economy. Robert Kennedy’s calling out of the BLS jobs fraud is actually just a window into what really ails America in 2023.

Real Median Family Income, 1954 to 2022 

For avoidance of doubt, here is the inflation-adjusted trend in net worth among the top 0.1% of US households—that is, the 130,000 wealthiest families in America with an average net worth of $140 million each. Unlike the flattening line in the chart above for real median family income, the inflation-adjusted net worth of the top 0.1% has risen from $4.1 trillion in 1990 to $18.6 trillion today.

In round numbers, that computes to an inflation-adjusted gain of $110 million per household. Yet that’s not the fruit of free market capitalism at work. To the contrary, these egregious contrasts between stagnation in the supply of good jobs and middle-class living standards versus the soaring wealth at the tippy- top of the economic latter is the rotten spawn of crony capitalism and the reckless money-pumping of a central bank that has become a man-servant of Wall Street speculators and money-shufflers.

It goes without saying, of course, that RFK stands firmly against the Uniparty’s capitulation to these Washington based assaults on honest, market capitalism.  So another phony jobs report is yet another reminder of why his independent candidacy for President comes just in the nick of time.

Inflation-Adjusted Net Worth of the Top 0.1% Of US Households, 1990 to 2023