Posted on 12/16/2025 8:12:28 AM PST by dangus
There's a lot of economic numbers that don't make sense lately. For one, 2.1 million immigrants and aliens have left the country in the past year; the native-born population has been declining for years now; and yet there are now 2.7 million working-aged people in America than there were a year ago. Another BLS stat shows that the "workforce" has grown by 3 1/4 million workers. That seems like about 5 million workers too many.
If employers are hiring legal workers instead of under the table, those legal workers would be now entering the workforce appearing on any tally of jobs created nor of unemployed workers. And in fact, 2.5 million more native-born workers have jobs than just one year ago, even while unemployment is up 900,000.
But if suddenly the labor market is that much tighter, shouldn't wages be surging? Well, if this was across-the-board, the answer would be yes. And here we see a strange divergence: Average earnings for all workers are only at 3.5% above a year before, down slightly from the year-over-year increase from last month. But average wages for production and non-supervisory are up 3.9%, and that figure is growing. This would be consistent with the labor market tightening for the sort of lower-wage jobs being vacated by illegal aliens, yet slackening for higher-wage jobs.
All of this suggests that the BLS has utterly failed to recognize massive shifts in the workforce. December (the first month after the election) seems to be when everything totally went off the rails. Gee, why would the BLS suddenly massively shift from under-counting workers to dramatically over-counting them the first month after Biden is defeated?
So why aren't American workers feeling this shift? After all, they don't go by official stats, as shown when they became very angry as early as 2004, when statistics like GDP and the stock market said skies were sunny, but voters were experiencing stagnant wages, skyrocketing housing costs and exploding trade deficits. It's very possible that they're really only now feeling the 2024 recession, fed by stats which reinforce perceptions. (Sorry, economists, that was a recession. 3.2 million more unemployed and a shrinking GDP mean a recession to any layperson.)
The good news is that the economy is largely locking in economic growth for 2026, which could help Trump shake off his bad economic approval ratings before the mid-terms. What makes this all the more incredible is that over the past three months, the budget deficit is average $100 billion per month smaller than a year earlier. That's $100 billion less stimulating the economy short-term while harming potential for longer-term growth.
BLS?
“If employers are hiring legal workers instead of under the table, those legal workers would be now entering the workforce appearing on any tally of jobs created nor of unemployed workers.”
SHOULD READ
“If employers are hiring legal workers instead of under the table, those legal workers would be now entering the workforce while NEITHER appearing on any tally of jobs created nor of unemployed workers.”
Sorry. Been in DC too long. BLS= Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Isn’t it true that people who are not working and not looking for work are not considered part of the workforce? It might be that more basement-dwellers are climbing up into the sunlight to get a job.
Bureau of Labor Statistics.
We have been wondering for years why we even have a BLS, if they are so consistently wrong.
More gaslighting by the elites. No one ever calls them on it, in a meaningful way.
And here I thought it was a bacon, lettuce, and salami sandwich
So the admin fired someone for coming up with numbers too favorable to them?
Bureau of labor statistics
Bureau of Labor Statistics?
“Sorry. Been in DC too long. BLS= Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
Don’t be sorry. You were giving labor statistics.
I think it’s pretty obvious that Biden’s people were cooking the books re: the economy on all fronts, and no one was calling them out on it.
We’ve learned over the last 10 years that ANY government statistics with political importance - inflation, employment, crime, immigration, covid - are MANIPULATED or outright FAKE.
Just eliminate them, and leave it to private statisticians.
>> Isn’t it true that people who are not working and not looking for work are not considered part of the workforce? <<
Yes... to a degree. The U3 unemployment rate measures anyone actively seeking a job. U4 unemployment rate includes those who are discouraged from looking for a job. U5 unemployment includes people who have been in the workforce in the past 12 months. And U6 unemployment includes people who are underemployed, working temporary assignments and part-time jobs while seeking stable work.
Those who are simply uninterested in working are very difficult to count, and whether they might take a good job if one appeared is a matter of pure speculation. Clearly, millions surprised economists by entering the workforce during Trump’s first term. It turned out if wages were high and jobs plentiful, suddenly it was worth putting off retiring or getting out of the house while the kids were at school... or maybe even that disability didn’t prevent someone from being able to work at any job at all. Or maybe people could afford someone checking up on Grandpa once in a while, rather than staying home themselves around the clock. And maybe some people could work while getting a degree... or who needs a degree when you can get a decent paying job without one?
If you mean to ask “maybe people are simply joining the workforce?” The answer is absolutely yes. But the BLS data doesn’t show any collapse in people outside the workforce, nor any surge in the number of employees. This suggests that people joining the workforce are replacing people exiting the workforce, which is what the Department of Homeland Security is seeing happening. So the question is why doesn’t BLS see this?
Thailand?
I can’t stand it. My wife flips acronyms and initials at me all the time. The latest IVF. WHAT? I say. “ In Vitro Fertilization”. She replies. I have had enough.
You think private statisticians can’t be bought...?
Illegal immigration makes it impossible to collect reliable statistics on employment, and makes it impossible to evaluate fiscal policy (how much will our programs cost?) and monetary policy (how much inflation will be caused by a given level of interest rates?). If you have millions to feed, clothe, send to school, treat for all illnesses, but you don’t know where they are or how much they earn in cash, you can’t reliably plan policy. There is another maxim, do illegal aliens cost American citizens more than we receive in benefits from low labor costs? The answer is intuitive - if they want to come here so badly, they must be getting more than they can get anywhere else. What they can get somewhere else is the value of their labor. So if they get more by coming here, they are being overpaid here.
No, BLS was dramatically undercounting illegal aliens in the workforce during Biden, then suddenly 3 million more under Trump. This meant that during Trump, millions of native workers took jobs previously held by illegal aliens without this being reported at all by BLS, and therefore there was no reduction in unemployment shown. This was in turn hidden by the fact that supposedly the American population exploded in December, 2024 and has been surging since, which is of course is utterly absurd.
The trick here is that anyone new at BLS really can’t show any of this until new baselines for the data are set after this month. Look for a massive drop in the size of the workforce next month, when a new baseline comes out. Don’t expect sudden changes in the unemployment rate; that doesn’t distinguish between legal and illegal workers.
The problem is that the workforce data depends on the CENSUS data and the Census data is based on polling. If someone quit answering their polls, the Census “officially” doesn’t know that the reason is they’ve left the country.
The upshot is that movement in the unemployment rate is very useful for measuring short-term changes in employment, such as assessing economic conditions. In the longer term, it becomes easily skewed by people changing their mind about whether to work or not.
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