Americans are conditioned to think that things must be improving if many jobs are being created — and of course, the incumbent administration invariably claims credit for this.
The problem is that merely creating work for someone to do does not necessarily mean any gain in the nation’s well-being. The jobs, after all, might be useless or even counterproductive, draining money away from people who produce value and turning it into paychecks for people who don’t.
In this AIER article, economics professor Gary Galles argues that we have a great deal of that today.
Galles writes:
Of particular interest to me lately has been the large fraction of jobs that have been “created” in government. While it hasn’t got much attention in (reflexively pro-Biden) mainstream media, some more careful observers are noticing. For example, last month, Ryan McMaken published a piece in Mises Wire titled “Employment Falls for the Third Month In Spite of 50,000 New Government Jobs,” which noted that “the growth in government jobs makes up about 20 percent of all new jobs.” This month, the Wall Street Journal had an editorial titled “The Government-Spending Jobs Boom,” noting that “more than half of the new jobs last month were in government, health care and social assistance” (the latter two areas relying on “transfer payments from government”).
Many of these government jobs entail work that impedes productivity elsewhere. Indeed, much of what the growing ranks of bureaucrats do gets in the way of useful business enterprise.
Galles continues:
Similarly, when laws or rules of questionable constitutionality or legality are promulgated (as with the Biden Administration’s environmental and education policies), it increases the number of lawyers and legal resources the government employs. It also increases the number employed by those who would be abused. Such opposition can be one of the most valuable investments for Americans in stopping such inroads on people’s rights, but even fighting them to a standstill leaves Americans worse off than if those overstepping initiatives had not been advanced in the first place.
Read the whole thing.