Government.

During the just-ended first half of 2023 federal, state, and local governments added 380,000 workers to their payrolls. As the chart below shows this was more hires than any industry in America. It was more than mining, manufacturing, construction, wholesale, and transportation — COMBINED.

Change in Payrolls Jan. – June 2023

Wait. With the federal government running a $2 trillion annual deficit, and with the Covid crisis long ago behind us, shouldn’t we be systematically downsizing?

The only industry that comes anywhere near the government in hiring so far in 2023 is health care/hospitals. And that industry is half funded with government dollars from government programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

Steve Moore and Vivek Ramaswamy penned a piece on this for the New York Post concluding that the economy is growing in all the wrong places: