​If you listen closely to today’s labor debates, you’ll hear a familiar refrain: workers need more protection from Washington. But scratch the surface, and what many politicians really mean is more power for unions, more mandates for employers, and fewer choices for workers themselves.

That’s backward.

In this episode of the Let People Prosper Show, I talk with Vinnie Vernuccio, one of the sharpest labor-policy minds in the country and a longtime advocate for actual worker freedom. We talk about what it really means to be pro-worker in a 21st-century economy—one defined by flexibility, technology, and individual choice, not 1930s labor law.

This is a timely conversation. Between renewed pushes for the PRO Act, rising use of AI in the workplace, and growing attacks on independent contracting and right-to-work laws, the future of work is being shaped right now. And too often, workers are treated as political props rather than individuals with agency.

This episode pushes back—hard.

🎧 Watch or listen to the full episode on YouTube, Apple Podcast, or Spotify, and visit my website at vanceginn.com for more information about my work at Ginn Economic Consulting.

Originally published on Substack. 

You’ve probably heard the line by now: “Don’t worry, the December jobs report was fine.” It wasn’t. Not on the surface. Not in the details. And not when you step back and look at where the labor market has been headed for years.

The weakness we’re seeing today did not start in December. It didn’t start in 2025. And it didn’t even start in 2022.

It started with man-made policy failures in 2020—destructive lockdowns, massive bailouts, and monetary excess—that broke labor-market institutions and left lasting damage. What we’re seeing now is the compounding effect of those decisions.

This is not a failure of free-market capitalism. It’s a failure of government interference.

December Was Weak—Even Before You Look at the Trend

Start with the actual numbers from the December Employment Situation report.

• Household employment rose by 232,000
• Nonfarm private-sector payrolls rose by 37,000
• Government hiring accounted for 13,000 Monday payrolls—a large share of the 50,000 total job gain

Those numbers are often spun as “mixed.” They’re not.

A 37,000 increase in private-sector jobs in a $28-trillion economy is weak. It signals that employers are pulling back, not expanding. And when government employment does the heavy lifting, it masks underlying weakness rather than fixing it.

Meanwhile, the household survey is volatile and often overstated month to month. It captures self-employment, multiple jobholding, and informal work—not sustained employer demand.

When private-sector hiring slows this sharply, the economy is already losing momentum.

The Labor Market Has Been Frozen Since 2022

Now zoom out. Both major labor market surveys tell the same story over time: the labor market has been essentially frozen since 2022, and it’s getting worse.
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Household employment has been flat since January 2025. After a brief rise early in Trump’s second term, employment fell after “Liberation Day” and never recovered. That sideways movement explains why workers feel stuck.

Private-sector payroll growth peaked in 2021–2022 and has decelerated steadily since, with further deterioration in 2025 amid increased policy uncertainty.

This is not cyclical weakness. It’s institutional damage.

Participation Confirms Structural Failure
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The employment-to-population ratio tells us why this feels so bad.

• The overall employment-to-population ratio is declining
• Baby boomer retirements explain part of this—but not all
• The prime-age (25–54) ratio is only slightly above 2022 levels and has flattened

This means fewer workers are supporting the economy, fewer opportunities are expanding, and growth potential is shrinking. That’s not how healthy labor markets behave.

Job openings remain elevated, but high openings without strong real wage growth reflect friction and mismatch, not prosperity.

The Real Damage Came From “Pow-flation”

The affordability crisis didn’t just appear. It was engineered.
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After Trump-Fauci-Biden lockdowns, Washington responded with massive fiscal bailouts and unprecedented debt. The Federal Reserve, under Jerome Powell, monetized much of that debt in 2020 and 2021, artificially suppressing interest rates.

That persistence matters because wages never caught up.

Real Pay Is Still Lower—and Families Feel It
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Real (inflation-adjusted) average weekly earnings are just now back to where they were in January 2021.

That figure understates the harm.

What matters is the cumulative loss in purchasing power—the area under the curve. Families didn’t just lose ground once. They’ve been losing ground for years.

Prices reset higher.

Paychecks did not.

That’s why affordability dominates every economic conversation—and why no amount of political messaging can change how people feel.

This Is Not a Market Failure

Let’s be clear about something: free-market capitalism did not fail. Markets didn’t shut down the economy in 2020. Markets didn’t print trillions of dollars. Markets didn’t freeze labor mobility or distort incentives. The government did.

What we’re living with now is the delayed cost of central planning, emergency powers, and monetary excess—not too much freedom.

What Must Change

If policymakers want to fix the labor market and restore affordability, the solution is not more intervention.

It requires:

• Ending runaway federal spending
• Abandoning protectionist trade policies
• Rolling back failed industrial policy
• Reducing regulatory and executive-order uncertainty
• Restoring price stability and labor-market flexibility

In short: get government out of the way. That’s how real wage growth returns, how opportunity expands, and how people prosper.

Final Thought

You’re going to hear a lot of spin in the months ahead. Some will claim the job numbers prove success. Others will claim disaster.

Both sides miss the point.

The labor market has been weak for years because policy broke it. Until leaders confront that truth—and stop repeating the mistakes that caused it—affordability will remain out of reach.
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Free markets didn’t fail. The government did.

​Today’s episode is our first of 2026, focused squarely on the latest economic headlines—and what they mean for your wallet, your work, and the direction of the country.

Washington has been busy. From another federal budget fight and renewed debates over health care subsidies, to fresh inflation data and major corporate developments, policymakers are already setting the tone for the year ahead. The choices being made now will shape whether families see real relief—or continued pressure—from higher costs and slower growth.

In this episode, we’ll look beyond the headlines to examine what’s really driving these developments, where policy is helping—or hurting—affordability, and what leaders should prioritize if they’re serious about restoring growth and prosperity in 2026. Tune in to the full episode on YouTube, Apple Podcast, or Spotify, and visit my website for more information.

​If you’ve ever wondered why it’s easier to order groceries on your phone than to legally cut hair, start a home business, or switch careers, this episode explains exactly what’s gone wrong.

America’s labor policies are stuck in the past—designed for a 1930s economy that no longer exists. Meanwhile, workers have moved on. They want flexibility. They want choice. They want opportunity. And increasingly, government is standing in the way.

My guest is Austen Bannan, Workforce Policy Fellow at Americans for Prosperity and one of the sharpest voices making the case for worker freedom over bureaucratic control. Austen works at the intersection of labor policy, occupational licensing, and education reform—where outdated rules quietly crush opportunity for millions of Americans.

This is a conversation about why empowering workers—not protecting systems—is essential if we actually want people to prosper.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of the Let People Prosper Show, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. You can also find more of my work at vanceginn.com and vanceginn.substack.com.

Originally published on Substack. 

​After the longest federal shutdown in U.S. history of 43 days, the September 2025 jobs report finally dropped on November 20–six weeks late—and what’s inside should raise alarms for anyone who cares about economic freedom, job creation, and the future of American prosperity.

In this issue, I break down why two of the last four months had negative job growth, why private-sector hiring is barely budging, why declining government jobs are good for growth, and how tariff-tax hikes are dragging down workers across the country. I also explain why the Supreme Court will play a critical role in restoring economic sanity.

Let’s dig in.

​Figure 1: Total Nonfarm Payroll Monthly Change

As the Wall Street Journal observed in their coverage of the delayed release, the timing clouded an already weak labor-market picture. (WSJ: Delayed Jobs Report — September 2025)

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), only 119,000 jobs were added in September. But the deeper story lies in the revisions: nonfarm employment was negative in two of the last four months once adjustments were included. July and August were revised down 33,000 jobs combined, flipping August from a gain to a loss.

BLS noted the shutdown gave firms more time to self-report payroll numbers, raising the collection rate to 80.2%. That may explain why revisions were smaller than earlier this year—not because the economy is stronger, but because the agency simply had more time to gather data.

The weakness is real.

Private-Sector Job Growth Barely Positive—While Government Jobs Shrink (Finally)

Figure 2: Private Payrolls Monthly Change

Here’s the part most media outlets gloss over: Private-sector hiring is slightly higher than the headline number because government employment is shrinking.

Federal government jobs fell by 3,000 in September and are down 97,000 since January. State and local government hiring is flat.

This is one of the few bright spots. Government does not create wealth—it consumes it. Lower government payrolls relieve pressure on the private economy, which funds everything.

But the bigger concern: even without government weighing down the numbers, private-sector hiring is still painfully slow. That means the problem isn’t the composition of employment. It’s federal policy itself.

This fits the pattern I’ve documented in my writings (see vanceginn.com):

When Washington overspends, overregulates, and tries to micromanage the economy, job growth stalls.

Tariff Taxes Are Killing Momentum — And the Supreme Court Must Step In

The timing isn’t subtle: the labor market flattened almost immediately after the administration rolled out its 2025 tariff tax hikes.

Tariffs raise the cost of producing, hiring, and investing. They are taxes on American workers and consumers—not foreign governments.

Even worse, they represent a constitutional problem: no president should have unilateral power to raise taxes through tariffs. The Founders intended the power of the purse to rest with Congress, not the executive.

If the Supreme Court reins in this overreach, it will be a victory for liberty, markets, and rule of law.

Household Employment Flat or Falling Since January

Insert Figure 3: Labor Force Participation Rate

While payroll data gets headlines, the household survey tells the real story:

• Employment has been flat or declining for nearly a year.
• Unemployment rose to 7.6 million people.
• Long-term unemployment remains high at 1.8 million.
• Part-time work for economic reasons remains elevated.

Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate is stuck at 62.4%—well below historical norms.

Even the prime-age employment-to-population ratio, often touted as a sign of strength, has stalled. This is a labor market pushing against policy headwinds.

A Sustainable Spending Limit Is Needed

A shrinking government workforce is encouraging, but it won’t matter unless Washington tackles the core problem: runaway government spending that crowds out private activity.

America needs spending cuts then a sustainable, population-plus-inflation spending limit—a rule that forces discipline, protects taxpayers, and spurs long-run prosperity.

Spending limits work. States and countries that adopt them thrive.
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The delayed September jobs report revealed what the federal shutdown couldn’t hide:

• Two of the last four months saw negative job growth.
• Private-sector hiring is barely moving.
• Government jobs are declining—which is good—but the private economy is still sluggish.
• Tariff taxes are stifling investment and hiring.
• Household employment is flat.
• Participation is stuck.
• The labor market is weak—and policy is making it weaker.

​America can do better. And it will—if Washington stops standing in the way.

Bottom Line

This month’s jobs report confirms what many families already feel: the labor market isn’t delivering the opportunity it should. Tariff taxes, regulation, and overspending are weighing down a private sector ready to innovate and grow.

The best path forward is simple: less government, more freedom, and strong fiscal rules that protect workers instead of political interests.