FACT: 65 million of America’s 80 million hourly-wage workers are in “services.”

THE NUMBERS: Americans at work, 2024* –

	2024	Change 2018/2024
Total employed	161.35 million	+5.59 million
Salaried and other non-wage workers	81.00 million	+6.51 million
Hourly-wage workers	80.35 million	-0.92 million
… hourly-wage in health	12.90 million	+0.54 million
… hourly-wage in retail	10.86 million	-0.44 million
… hourly-wage in manufacturing	8.45 million	-0.96 million
… hourly-wage in restaurants	7.26 million	-0.07 million
… hourly-wage in construction	5.62 million	+0.12 million

* Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey.

WHAT THEY MEAN:
The paradox at the core of the Trump administration’s tariff decrees: for American working life to improve, they argue, working-class living standards must fall. (Three TVs are too many for a working family, two dolls per girl should be enough, no price would be too high for locally-made toasters, etc.) Put more sympathetically, the administration’s claim is that while tariffs raise prices for families, they will offset this by shifting workers out of their current jobs into factories.

This may or may not be what workers actually want — as PPI President Will Marshall noted last week, polling suggests workers look more to tech industries than factories for next-generation jobs. Either way, seven years of experience with Mr. Trump’s first-term tariffs (imposed from early 2018 to late 2019), and several months’ experience with this spring’s larger decrees, provide some evidence as to whether tariffs actually do this.  Two definitions, then the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Working Americans: According to the BLS, 161.4 million Americans were employed last year.  Half of them, 80.35 million, earned their income in hourly wages. (As opposed to annual salaries, executive profit-sharing arrangements, investments, professional fees, etc..)  About 80% of hourly-wage Americans — 65 million of the 80.35 million— work in “services” jobs: waiting tables, stocking grocery shelves, replacing brake-pads, trimming hair, cleaning halls, and running hospital admissions desks. The other 20%, 15.3 million people, are in “industrial” or  “goods-producing” work in factories, farms, construction sites, mines, and logging and fishing jobs. Here’s a rundown with some more detail:

All employed Americans, 2024 161.35 million Salaried and other non-wage workers 81.00 million Hourly-wage workers 80.35 million … in health 12.90 million … in retail 10.86 million … in manufacturing   8.45 million … in restaurants & other food services   7.26 million … in construction   5.62 million … in “other   services”*   3.15 million … in education   1.94 million … in agriculture, forestry, & fisheries   0.86 million … in accommodation   0.84 million … in maid/domestic work   0.47 million … in mining   0.32 million All other 27.68 million

* “Other services” is a miscellaneous BLS category including personal care work such as hair salons and beauty parlors, repair shops, dry-cleaning and laundry, funeral homes, non-profits, and others.

Tariffs: Tariffs are taxes on purchases of goods (whether consumer products, raw materials, or industrial inputs) from a foreign supplier.  Their effects on goods-producing industries and their employees are complex: they give some manufacturers, mining companies, and farmers “protection” from foreign competition, harm others by raising production costs and diminishing exports, and give many a confusing mix of both things. But for workers in the services industries — again, seven eight hourly-wage workers in every eight — tariffs just mean higher prices.

If the administration is right, new opportunities in factory jobs might offset some of their losses. But since there are so many more workers in services than goods production, it would take lots of job-shifting for working America to gain on net. And in fact we aren’t seeing any such job shifting at all — since 2018, hourly-wage manufacturing employment has been at best flat and has more likely shrunk.  Three perspectives from the BLS, on total employment, job openings, and hourly-wage jobs:

(a) Manufacturing employment been flat since 2018, and down 88,000 this year. BLS’ monthly “Employment Situation” reports found about 12.7 million manufacturing workers in 2018. This was about 1.2 million above the 11.5 million jobs at the financial-crisis low in early 2010, reflecting slow but steady growth during and just after the Obama administration. In 2024, they found 12.8 million manufacturing jobs, suggesting that job creation had slowed. The most recent report, for May 2025, is once again at 12.7 million, down 88,000 over the past year with losses concentrated in metal-using industries such as farm equipment, auto parts, and machinery.

(b) Fewer open manufacturing jobs: A second BLS survey, “Job Openings and Labor Turnover”, reported about 500,000 open factory jobs at any given time in 2023 and 2024.  The precise figure for January 2025, just before Mr. Trump’s first 2025 tariff decree, was 513,000 open jobs.  Since then, job openings have contracted each month, to 381,000 in May. Except for three anomalous pandemic months in early 2020, this is the smallest number of open jobs in eight years.

(c) Fewer hourly-wage manufacturing jobs, but more salaried manufacturing jobs. Within manufacturing, meanwhile, companies appear to be hiring more very high-skill employees and fewer line-type workers.  BLS’ annual “Current Population Survey” (which counts differently and gets somewhat larger numbers) reports a net loss of 700,000 manufacturing jobs from 2018 to 2024, from 15.7 million to 15.0 million.  Within this overall total, hourly-wage work has fallen sharply — down nearly a million, from 9.41 million to 8.45 million jobs — but salaried and other non-wage employment has grown by nearly 300,000. This suggests structural change, with factories relying relatively less on human labor, and relatively more on computers, robots, and human experts such as engineers and software professionals.

So: Lots of factors affect employment, and disentangling the effects of the post-2018 tariffs from those of business cycle fluctuations, technological change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other things isn’t easy. But the last decade’s experience gives little credence to administration arguments that higher tariffs mean more manufacturing work. Calling the claim “fool’s gold,” Marshall has a different approach, amplified last week by an in-depth paper from PPI’s Deanna Ross and Bruno Manno on apprenticeships and skill development. That is, recognize the premium businesses of all kinds are placing on expertise, understand that college degrees shouldn’t always be needed for these jobs, and help non-college workers qualify for the higher-skill jobs (in any industry) where most hiring seems to be going on:

“[A] new national commitment to guaranteeing ‘high skills for all.’ Non-college Americans, a majority of the electorate, need a more robust alternative to college: A post-secondary system of work-study opportunities that enable young people to get in-demand skills, credentials, and work experience quickly and affordably.”

FURTHER READING

PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:

• Defend the Constitution and oppose rule by decree;
• Connect tariff policy to growth, work, prices and family budgets, and living standards;
• Stand by America’s neighbors and allies;
• Offer a positive alternative.

FACT: One U.S. measles death from 2000 to 2024; three so far this year.

THE NUMBERS: Measles cases in the United States –

 

Jan.-June 2025	1,197
2024	285
2023	59
Average 2000-2024	178
2000	86
1990	27,786
1970	47,351
1960	441,703

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Measles is an exceptionally “transmissible” disease — one infected person will typically pass it to 12-18 more — and survivors often suffer long-term immune system damage and a heightened risk of early dementia. In the 1950s, American health statistics typically showed about half a million cases and 500 deaths a year. The 1964 introduction of measles vaccines produced by Merck and Pfizer cut this by 90% — to 47,351 — by 1970, and to an average below 200 per year since 2000.  That can make people complacent — and then near-vanished diseases can return.  This year’s measles epidemic, centered in a low-vaccination Texas county, has already hospitalized 112 people and killed three. As long-time anti-vaccination crank Robert F. Kennedy Jr. purges immunization experts at the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Trump administration asks Congress to cancel U.S. contributions to GAVI (the international consortium providing 70 million no-cost vaccinations in low-income countries annually), some background on vaccines, malgovernance, and the possible future:

Vaccines are classes of medicine offering advance protection from 25 contagious diseases — smallpox, typhoid, hepatitis A and hepatitis B, tetanus, diphtheria, polio, measles, rabies, cholera, and encephalitis — borne by viruses or bacteria. The mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 is the most recent.  Vaccines come into use in the United States after a scientific evaluation, formal government approval, and finally recommendations for use by medical professionals. Both here and worldwide, they have made life safer, longer, and better. For example:

Poliomyelitis: In the 1940s and 1950s, before the introduction of the Salk vaccine, America’s annual polio counts often topped 57,000 cases and 3,000 deaths. Since 1993, we have had one case, an unvaccinated man returning from abroad. Overseas, though some “wild” strains remain endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan, universal vaccination programs run by the World Health Organization, USAID, the CDC, charities, and national health ministries have cut case levels by 99.99%. The numbers:

2024             96 polio cases
2020               6 polio cases
2010           650 polio cases
2000        3,500 polio cases
1988    350,000 polio cases

Neo-natal tetanus data are similar: U.S. case rates have dropped from about 500 a year in the 1950s to 30 or so since 2000. Abroad, campaigns to vaccinate pregnant women and guarantee antiseptic standards in poor-country maternity clinics have cut deaths by about 99%, from nearly a million to fewer than 10,000 annually.

2021        7,719 tetanus deaths
2018      25,000 tetanus deaths
2000    309,000 tetanus deaths
1988    787,000 tetanus deaths

To place these specific cases in wider perspective, worldwide vaccination campaigns such as those run by GAVI – which spends a modest $1.7 billion a year, with America providing $300 million of it, to vaccinate 70 million children in 59 developing countries — have joined with the invention of new treatments and improving primary care to cut world under-five mortality rates by half since 2000 and nearly three-quarters in a generation.

2023	37 deaths per 1000 children
2020	39 deaths per 1000 children
2010	53 deaths per 1000 children
2000	77 deaths per 1000 children
1990	94 deaths per 1000 children
1980	132 deaths per 1000 children

World Health Organization for 1990-2023; World Bank World Development Indicators for 1980.

In sum, vaccine work — by scientists in government and private-sector labs, by businesses inventing and producing medicines, by charities and international organizations, by nurses and doctors, and by clinics and hospitals — has vastly reduced disease case counts, saved many lives, and given young children better chances in life. The achievement may have been so impressive, in fact, as to encourage a dangerous complacency.

This year’s measles outbreak is a vivid example.  The Centers for Disease Control notes that since 2020, America’s rate of “MMR” vaccination (the “measles, mumps, and rubella” combined shot) has fallen from 93.9% to 91.3% — that is, below the level thought necessary for the “herd immunity” which helps protect immune-suppressed people. Gaines County in Texas, the center of this year’s measles outbreak, has an especially low 83.7% rate. CDC’s count shows that within a few months, it has already infected 1197 people (including 347 children under 5, and 446 older children and teenagers), and will likely be the largest outbreak in three decades. The three people who died of it were all unvaccinated.

After decades of safety, then, Americans may be unwisely discounting disease risk and giving cranks and self-taught “contrarians” audiences they don’t deserve. The same may be true internationally. Worldwide measles deaths, having dropped by 92% from 1980 to 2020, have recently risen as global vaccination rates have slipped from 86% of children in 2020 to 83% in 2023.

2023	107,500 deaths
2020	69,400 deaths
2010	203,000 deaths
2000	525,000 deaths
1980	810,000 deaths

Which brings us back to the Trump administration, this month’s ominous events at HHS, and Congress’ debate over health-aid “rescissions” this week.

Mr. Kennedy’s tragi-comic launch event — a “report” on children’s health apparently compiled by an AI program, stocked with invented quotes and cites to non-existent studies — has been followed by steadily escalating attempts to erode vaccination policy at home. Since May, Mr. Kennedy has canceled support for the development of second-generation mRNA vaccines and bypassed CDC professionals to remove scientific recommendations for COVID-19 vaccination updates; and, two weeks ago, fired the 17 members of the CDC’s voluntary expert advisory group, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a few weeks before their regular June meeting. The extraordinary op-ed (subs. req.) he used to announce this justifies the decision with (a) fact-free innuendo about “conflicts of interest” among the current ACIP members, without any specific claim to back it up, and (b) an open admission that the administration sees ACIP positions less as sources of impartial analysis than as patronage. (“[W]ithout removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028”.) The American Medical Association’s comment:

“For generations, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has been a trusted national source of science-and data-driven advice and guidance on the use of vaccines to prevent and control disease. Physicians, parents, community leaders and public health officials rely on them for clinical guidance, public health information, and knowledge. Today’s action to remove the 17 sitting members of ACIP undermines that trust and upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives. With an ongoing measles outbreak and routine child vaccination rates declining, this move will further fuel the spread of vaccine-preventable illnesses.”

The administration is matching this malgovernance abroad. Their “rescissions” bill cancels the entire U.S. contribution to GAVI, along with hundreds of millions of dollars meant for child and maternal health, HIV/AIDS, and other public health programs. (Sample justification, direct quote: “programs that are antithetical to American interests and worsen the lives of women and children, like ‘family planning’ and ‘reproductive health.’”) If the Senate approves it, the U.S.’ commitment to vaccination abroad will shrivel to pretty much nothing.

Both at home and abroad, then, public complacency has grown and government policy deteriorated. If the approach of the administration’s first five months persists, the next three years may be somber: an era in which long-vanished diseases return in force to America, children’s health erodes here and abroad, and life grows more dangerous. Congress, we hope, is aware that the right approach is diametrically opposite. Again, vaccines have made life longer, safer and better. We need more of them, not less.

FURTHER READING

PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:

• Defend the Constitution and oppose rule by decree;
• Connect tariff policy to growth, work, prices and family budgets, and living standards;
• Stand by America’s neighbors and allies;
• Offer a positive alternative.