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It’s Kill (the) Bill Time, Part 3

It’s Kill (the) Bill Time, Part 3

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david stockman
Jun 06, 2025
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David Stockmans Contra Corner
It’s Kill (the) Bill Time, Part 3
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If you want to understand why Elon Musk’s characterization of OBBBA as a fiscal abomination is spot on, the chart below provides a pretty good stating point. It shows the total nonfarm labor hours worked in the US economy each year between 1980 and the present (thru 2022). What makes it especially pertinent is that it measures labor input on an apples-to-apples basis (hours) over time, and therefore is not distorted by the BLS headline numbers which are increasingly dominated by part-time, low-wage workers.

Accordingly, there were 166 billion labor hours supplied to the US economy in 1980, which figure grew to 260 billion hours by 2022. That made for a respectable 1.0% per annum growth rate over that 42 year span, but here’s the skunk on the woodpile: As we saw in Part 2, during the same period the net number of transfer payment recipients grew from 73.0 million in 1980 to 168.0 million at present.

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