In July 1978 60% of teenagers 16-19 years old worked, but in August 2026 only 32.8% do

Bring back the cult of work.

 

 

There were 25.89 million prime working age people 25-54 years of age in America just like Abdul who didn't work in August 2026, but Abdul says we have a cult of work

 We have 11.76 million teenagers 16-19 years old, 7.45 million college kids 20-24 years old, 25.89 million core adults 25-54 years old, and 67.63 million people 55 or older, all of whom did not work in August 2026.

That's over 112 million eating but not working.

They can't all work, obviously, but if each group lived up to its own past peak performance, 13.27 million more across all groups could in fact be working who are not working.

That 13.27 million more working is just 11.8% more.

GDP sucks in part because we aren't working up to our past potential.

As I incessantly point out, the key to a happy life is a full time job, because it allows you to arbitrage it for a car, a home, a spouse, and children.

Peak full time in America was in July 2000 when 54.67% had a full time job. In August 2026 just 49.14% did. The difference between those two points at current population is an extra 15.2 million full time jobs which we don't presently have.

America is a much bigger place now than in July 2000, too, by 63 million in civilian non-institutional population. Shouldn't that also make us stronger? 

Do we really think an extra 15 million out of 112 million is dreaming the impossible dream?  

We need leaders who don't think so.

But this guy . . . 

 

 

Who's not working in August 2026?

Over 112 million, that's who: 

67.2% of teenagers 16-19 years old: 11.8 million

33.7% of the college-aged 20-24 years old: 7.5 million

19.9% of prime working age adults 25-54 years old: 25.9 million

64.1% of the population 55 years old or older: 67.6 million.

Trump's IRS turns a blind eye to illegal alien employment

 

Exposed: Illegal Alien Employment Workaround

Victoria Manning, Restoration News

 

Federal law prohibits employers from knowingly hiring an unauthorized immigrant and from employing someone without work authorization. Yet a growing network of nonprofits and universities is teaching the illegal alien community exactly how to get around the law, one Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) at a time.

The IRS only cares about collecting taxes—illegal or not. It all starts with the ITIN.

Immigrants Rising, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is one of several organizations Restoration News has uncovered that openly help undocumented immigrants bypass work authorization requirements. It is just one example in our investigative series on the topic.

... Even though foreigners should not work in the United States without work authorization, an ITIN can be used to obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN) to establish a business. The IRS is aware of this workaround—and looks away.

 

... The IRS states that an ITIN does not “authorize you to work legally in the U.S.” However, you can “apply for an ITIN regardless of immigration status.” Uncle Sam wants its tax money, even if the employment violates work authorization laws.

 

The process is severely flawed. Lawful immigrants who follow the lengthy and costly process to come to America legally often still must wait in line to receive proper work authorization. Yet the IRS turns a blind eye to illegal aliens who circumvent the law to take jobs away from legal migrants and citizens.

 

The IRS allows third-party groups known as Certifying Acceptance Agents (CAAs) to process paperwork and certify the identities of applicants to obtain an ITIN. Nearly anyone can become a CAA—just complete the online training, apply, and wait for approval. Illegal aliens can then go to a CAA to obtain an ITIN without ever having to interact directly with the IRS. A student identification card (for individuals under age 24), a foreign driver’s license, and a foreign birth certificate are acceptable documents to verify a person’s identity for an ITIN. No need to prove legal status, and those documents don’t have to be sent to the IRS. They remain with the CAA.

 

... The IRS should stop treating tax compliance as a substitute for legal status. And the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department should start asking why elite universities and tax-exempt organizations are functioning as distribution channels for a workaround to federal law. 

This story is all excited about that little squiggle uptick on the right lol

 

The Real Economy: Manufacturing Jobs

Oren Cass, Commonplace

 

Joe Biden manufacturing employment never looked so good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Every age group in America has lost its worth ethic to one degree or another, for one reason or another

The percentage of each age group's population which works is in structural decline:

Teens since 1978 (get a haircut and get a real job); 

College kids since 1989 (because they went to college more and more after that, duh);

Core adults 25-54 since the late 1990s (they keep getting knocked down but they mostly keep getting back up again 👍 -- this is a huge tranche with some people carrying the load more than others, and you know who you are);

Americans 55 and over since 2019 (the Great Recession didn't kill 'em, from which they made more than a nice recovery, but they are not going to recover from the pandemic era for decades to come because Peak Baby Boom turned 62 that year).

  

 

Trump is too stupid to take the win handed to him by +162k payrolls in August

  New York Fed’s Williams says yield surge due to strong economic prospects

Analysis: Lower Treasury yields could require a weaker economy. Trump won’t fix them 

... The rise in real yields is “more of a reflection of the strength of the economy,” New York Federal Reserve President John Williams told CNBC Wednesday. Some people want to read the rise in yields as dragging on the economy, but that logic is backward, he said. 

“It’s not really about financial conditions affecting the economy. It’s more about the economy affecting financial conditions,” Williams said.  

The flip side of Williams’ analysis is that it may take an economic slowdown for borrowing costs to cool. But that isn’t a solution anyone would want to root for.

 

This will never not be funny

They hate you with the heat of 1,000 suns. 

 U.S. payrolls rose 162,000 in August, much more than expected; unemployment rate at 4.1%

 

I don't know how you crash something that was so tiny already, but Trump found a way

 Manufacturing employment as a percentage of population:

 

Golden Age NOT: Just 49.14% had a full time job in August 2026, the second lowest figure for an August in 11 years

Both Biden and Trump have had this figure above 50%, but even that has been pathetically weak.

 

Compared to the past, 50% should be the floor, not the ceiling.

 

I remain disgusted with the complacency of both political parties, as demonstrated by the complete absence of urgency about the one thing which is the very ticket to the middle class. 

 

August 2016: 49.59%

August 2017: 49.87%

August 2018: 50.36%

August 2019: 50.94%

August 2020: 47.44%

August 2021: 49.18%

August 2022: 50.58%

August 2023: 50.68%

August 2024: 49.98%

August 2025: 49.44%

August 2026: 49.14%

 

 

Well, that's not supposed to be happening in the new Golden Age

Private payrolls rose by 38,000 in August, less than expected, ADP reports 

 ... Manufacturing lost 17,000 jobs, professional and business services was off 16,000 and both the natural resources and mining as well as trade, transportation and utilities reported declines of 5,000. ...

Just 30% of teenagers worked in 1H2026

 Whose kids are these anyway?

 

The boom in manufacturing is so quiet it's showing up as -0.11% change from a year ago in July 2026 for manufacturing employment

 😂😂😂

The Quiet Manufacturing Boom

Steve Cortes, The Daily Signal

 

This is the ten year chart, from July 2016, a few months before Trump was elected the first time.

 

The trend for manufacturing employment growth since then is negative.

 

Be careful about what politicians promise.

 

You often get the exact opposite ("mission accomplished", affordable healthcare, Mexico will pay for the wall, "we're going to cure cancer", energy bills cut in half, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera).

 

Meanwhile the trend for industrial production in manufacturing remains . . . not good. 

 

 

 

Yes, but it's been all downhill for six years already

 ... There are already a record 11.6 million Americans aged 65 and older still punching the clock. ... today’s elderly may actually be the last generation capable of working until they die on this scale. ...

More.

The percentage of older Americans working peaked in 2019-2020, as Peak Baby Boom 1957 turned 62. It's been all downhill from there.

The phenomenon has been a function of the size of the cohort relative to the overall population. The Baby Boom is like a dead bunny passing through the body of the snake.

Meanwhile the author fears the jobs these older people do are vulnerable to replacement by AI because they are supposedly overwhelmingly cognitive, so that younger workers will never be able to work until age 67 like many older Americans currently do.

But older workers are a diverse lot, performing a variety of work that can't be dismissed as simply cognitive.

Currently, the top 20 jobs by headcount of workers 55 and over according to the BLS are quite diverse, and categories where growth is expected to one degree or another in green outnumber those where stagnation and decline are expected in red by 3.5:1:

Truck, delivery, tractor trailer drivers 1.3m

Secretaries/admins 1.05m

Registered nurses 1m

Dirty rotten CEOs/senior management 0.95m

Retail supervisors 0.85m

Janitors/cleaners 0.8m

Teachers through grade eight 0.75m

Bean counters/financial managers 0.7m

Retail clerks 0.65m

Personal care aides 0.6m

Farmers/ranchers 0.55m (more than 54% of the industry)

Post-secondary educators 0.5m

Real estate agents 0.45m

Lawyers 0.4m

Property managers 0.35m

Home health aides 0.35m

Bus drivers 0.32m

Maids/housekeepers 0.3m

Billing/posting clerks 0.25m

Religious workers 0.22m.

  

 

Peak Baby Boom 1957 reaching full retirement age in 2023 is driving a new exodus from the labor force making 2023 the biggest single year rate spike in new Social Security enrollments since 2009

 New Social Security retirement enrollments experienced a significant +5.01% spike in 2023, marking the largest single-year growth rate since the conclusion of the recession wave in 2009. 

Peak Baby Boom started in 1957 and ended in 1961, with an average of 4.3 million births in each of the five years.

If you were born in January 1957, you reached full retirement age in July 2023 and were eligible for your first payment in August 2023. A person born in December 1961 is eligible for their first payment in December 2028. 

This means the new exodus out of the labor force and into retirement and into the not-in-labor-force category will last from mid-2023 into 2029, a tsunami crashing out of the economy as these individuals become 66+ and 67 years old in their turn. Full retirement age is 66+6 months for 1957 (2023+), 66+8 months for 1958 (2024+), 66+10 months for 1959 (2025+), and 67 years for 1960 and 1961 (2027, 2028).

This exodus will combine with AI to incentivize reductions in force in corporate America, and we're already witnessing it.

For 2024-26 to date, layoffs have been running ~766k/yr on average annualized ahead of the average 20 million layoffs per year. Announced corporate job cuts late 2024-25 were ~720k, the highest in 15 years.

Trump reductions in force for the federal government at ~250k net contribute but are a sideshow by comparison.

Perhaps fortunately, the Baby Bust of 1973-1976, when annual births crashed to multi-decade lows of 3.1 million per year, means fewer people in their fifties exist to be victimized by AI like Baby Boomers were victimized by the Great Recession in 2009.

But the shrinking talent pool snaking its way through the economy may also be a reason driving AI in the first place.

The problem of unintended consequences is inescapable.

One thing we could fix though is "disabled workers". The Dot Com Bust and The Great Recession didn't suddenly disable anybody, but that's what the data shows.

They exploited a chink in the armor of the Social Security system, and are one big reason the system is teetering.

The Bush and Obama administrations both let it happen because they wouldn't, or couldn't, address the consequences of job loss in a straightforward manner, so they burdened the system instead with a wink, a nod, and an averting of the gaze.

Well, just look at the damn thing. ↓ 

  

Rush Limbaugh's 106.189 million eating, but not working, a new high, in Trump's America!

The collapse in full time jobs continues in July 2026

 Full time employment as a percentage of civilian noninstitutional population has collapsed from 54.67% working full time in July 2000 to 48.97% in July 2026.

Just adding one full percentage point working full time in July 2026, effectively getting us to 50%, would mean 2.75 million more people working full time.

Where are they? At the movies making Christopher Nolan rich? 

When it comes to all employment, both full and part time, as a percentage of population, July 2026 might as well be the summer of 1969, with just 59.13% working at any job.

And don't @me with the multiple jobholding bs.

5.4% of the employed worked multiple jobs in July 2026, 8.69 million.

2.16 million had two part time jobs.

4.77 million full timers also worked a part time job.

Just 0.473 million full time go-getters took away a second full time job from someone else. 

It is just staggering how much this country is not working up to its potential.

 

Private payrolls: The trend for additions has been flat to only slightly down since the November 2024 election

 

The four week moving average of initial claims for unemployment hasn't been lower since October 2022

198,750 August 1, 2026

197,500 October 1, 2022

See previous post.

 😏 

 

Initial claims for unemployment are the lowest since October 2022 at 171,246

But go off about how bad everything is.

Slow news day: Twenty days after the figure was updated the New York Post finally does a story on it

 Shocking 105 million Americans are not working – more than during COVID or the Great Recession