The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released the latest employment numbers. The report tells us that only 38,000 new jobs were created in May, the worst monthly jobs report since 2010. 

Analysis of weakness in the various job sectors is very revealing. The health care sector reported 46,000 new jobs. In other words, the non-health care areas actually lost 8,000 jobs.

For the past year, health care employment has increased at almost twice the rate of non-health care employment. For the year May 2015 to May 2016, total non-farm jobs increased by 2.4 million or 1.69 percent. For the same time period, health care sector jobs increased by 487,000 or 3.24 percent.

Undoubtedly, the increase in health care sector employment reflects the fact that more people are now insured through the Obamacare exchanges, the Medicaid entitlement has expanded because of Obamacare, and as seniors retire, the Medicare program has increased enrollment. These are government programs paid for by taxpayers. New health care employees do not always work directly for the government, but the vast majority of payments for these programs come directly from taxpayers through the government.

The increase in health care sector employment essentially means more government-funded jobs. The numbers may show growth, but these in no way indicate growth in the private wealth-generating economy. Only in the private sector can overall productivity increase. Expanding government does nothing to increase the size of a country’s economy. It is like bailing water out of the deep end of a swimming pool and pouring it into the shallow end, while expecting the whole pool to get larger in the process.

Research done by the Georgetown University Center on Education and Workforce shows that the majority of these new health care sector jobs are in low-paying work areas such as nurse-aids. These are important jobs, but without substantially more education, these workers find themselves in terminal positions with little opportunity for advancement. The country is not adding significantly more registered nurses and doctors.

Proponents of government programs say expanding entitlements grows the economy, not realizing that all public money has to be taken out of the private sector first. It is unclear how increasing taxes or borrowing against future generations increases the financial well-being for states and the nation.

The argument might sound good until your realize that entitlement spending is only half the story. Entitlement dollars must come from taxes, which are taken from other consumer spending. The studies that show an economic benefit from a government program neglect to account for the lost uses of those tax dollars. In other words, if the money were not paying for an entitlement, it would go to other productive economic activities. There might be fewer jobs in health care, but there would be more jobs in other areas of the economy.

Entitlements do not create wealth, they only involve government power inefficiently moving money from one place to another. Health economist Dr. Robert A. Book researched the impact of Medicaid expansion and included the dead-weight burden of taxes to pay for the entitlement. He found that if all states expanded Medicaid, the economic loss to the country would be $174 billion over 10 years. Because Washington state officials elected to expand Medicaid, the state will potentially see an economic loss of $13.5 billion over 10 years due to other lost productive activities.

The national economy has struggled to recover from the Great Recession of 2008. The middle socioeconomic class continues to shrink. Adding a higher percentage of government jobs compared to private jobs will never improve the economy and expand the workforce with well-paying employment. Elected officials must reform entitlements, allow more health care choices, decrease the tax load on Americans, especially the middle class, and cut the regulatory burden on employers to truly jump start the economy.