Fact Pack! Federal Worker Whiplash

By Hightower Las Vegas and RCG Economics on February 11, 2025

When a federal judge temporarily blocked President Trump’s deferred resignation program for federal workers a few hours before the midnight deadline, it slowed the roll of at least 65,000 federal employees ready to opt-in to an early out.

If declared legal, federal employees who leave their jobs by the end of February will receive full pay through September. In the meantime, CHARTR helpfully put together this nice graphic of federal agency employment numbers:

Note that the biggest portion of the federal employee roster is in defense or security-related agencies. VA departments account for 21.4 percent of federal employees, the Army for 9.7 percent, and the Navy for 9.5 percent — nearly 1 million workers in total.

Jobs Report

Nonfarm payrolls in January rose by a seasonally adjusted 143,000 for the month, down from 307,000 in December and below the 169,000 forecast. The unemployment rate dipped to 4 percent.

Job growth was concentrated in health care (44,000), retail (34,000) and government (32,000).

Average hourly earnings increased 0.5 percent for the month and 4.1 percent from a year ago, compared with respective estimates for 0.3 percent and 3.7 percent.

Women in the Workplace

McKinsey & Company is out with a report we are pleased to share: Women in the Workplace 2024: The 10th-anniversary report. Give it a read for the fine details and methodology, but here are graphs showing the major findings:

As of 2024

As shown, the analysis found that women today make up 29 percent of C-suite positions, compared with just 17 percent in 2015. Progress has been slower earlier in the pipeline, at the entry and manager levels.

As of 2024

In addition to the findings above, women were still far less likely than men to attain their first promotion to a manager role. In 2018, for every 100 men who received their first promotion to manager in 2018, 79 women were promoted. In 2024, just 81 women were. 

Population Growth

Remember when Nevada was consistently the fastest growing state in the nation? We’re still in the top three, but Utah and Idaho gained more residents (by percentage) between 2013 and 2023:

Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2003 to 2023)

Table of the top 12:

Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2003 to 2023)

Bottom 12:

Source:  U.S. Census Bureau (2003 to 2023)

Import Partners

The persistent presence of international trade and tariff activity in recent headlines seems to have prompted the fine folks at Visual Capitalist to analyze each state’s biggest influx of goods from outside the country. Highlights:

Canada is the top import partner for 23 U.S. states, according to Census Bureau data — and the largest supplier of grain, livestock, meat, and poultry to the U.S.

Mexico is the top import partner for 10 states, and the nation’s largest supplier of fruits and vegetables. Forty percent of Texas’s imports come from Mexico.

U.S. trade with these two neighboring countries also includes machinery, vehicles, oil, and petroleum products. The U.S. imports about $900 billion in goods from Canada and Mexico annually.

China is the top trading partner for nine states, including California and Florida. Approximately one-quarter of all imports to California come from China, totaling $113 billion per year.

Infographic:

As of November 2024

Data sourced from the Census Bureau

If you’re wondering why Oregon’s primary import partner is Japan, The Beaver State processes a large share of the foreign-made automobiles sold in the U.S. (think Toyota and Honda) through the Port of Portland, along with Japanese-made machinery, electronics, and some agricultural products.

Michigan also stands out in and among its neighbors, importing more from Mexico than from Canada — from vehicles to auto parts, to audio and visual equipment, to medical supplies, to beer and alcohol.

Notably, Mexico — not Japan — is the largest exporter of vehicles to the U.S.

 Geopolitics and Global Trade

The McKinsey Global Institute has made a study of shifting trade patterns, and the latest update shows that in 2024:

The U.S. continued to shift trade activity away from China and toward other countries including Mexico and Vietnam. (Caveat: McKinsey notes that in some cases, what might appear to be a shift was those two smaller economies becoming an intermediate step in trade flows between China and the U.S.)

European economies have continued to move away from trade with Russia and have increased trade with other partners, most notably the U.S.

Developing economies now account for most of China’s imports and exports.

Economies such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Brazil, and India continue to build and strengthen trade ties across the geopolitical spectrum.

Explainer from Hightower Wealth Management Advisor and Fact Pack co-publisher Mike PeQueen on how to think about international trade so you can dazzle your co-workers with subject matter knowledge:

Trade connects and significantly influences economies around the world. When critical resources or essential manufactured goods are in play, a region’s economic dependency on trade is magnified. For example, the U.S. is an exporter of non-fuel minerals on net, but heavily relies on imports of about 30 critical rare earth metals — ultimately amounting to inclusion in close to 75 percent of U.S. consumption annually.

It’s also important to understand that each country and each region has a unique trade footprint. Analysts look at measures including geographic distance between trade partners, trade volume in comparison to an economy’s size, and import impact to gain insight into different economies and how impactful a supply relationship is to both parties.

The following McKinsey graphic nicely illustrates regional dependency on imports. Dark purple indicates a greater than 50 percent reliance on imports relative to domestic consumption.

As of 2023 or the most recent available WTO, IHS or OECD data

Notable items:

Europe relies on imports for more than 50 percent of its energy consumption.

Mainland China imports more than 25 percent but less than 50 percent of its minerals.

The Middle East and North African regions rely on other regions for more than 50 percent of their electronics.

Every major region relies on imports for more than 25 percent of its consumption of at least one type of critical resource, manufactured good, or service.

Goods trade intensity in the U.S. is lower than that of many large economies due (in part) to its relatively large domestic economy and natural resources and endowments.

Brazil’s exports travel farther than those of many economies because of significant trade with China, and China’s high geopolitical distance of trade is driven by extensive trade with Australia, the EU, Japan, South Korea, and the U.S.

The following McKinsey graph illustrates geopolitical distance of trade — defined as the cross-section of geographical distance and value of goods traded (2021).

As of 2021

McKinsey found that there was a global decline in geopolitical distance of trade of about 7 percent between 2017 and 2024, a period marked by trade tensions between the U.S. and China, as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Not every region saw a drop, though. McKinsey found that the geopolitical distance of trade among ASEAN, Brazil, and India was stable or increased during the same period.

Finally, a few interesting takeaways from the latest U.S. trade data:

The U.S. reduced its share of trade in manufactured goods with China by six percentage points and increased its share of imports from Mexico and ASEAN by about two and four percentage points, respectively, between 2017 and 2024.

As a result, as of 2023, Mexico became the largest supplier of goods to the U.S. — a position China had held since 2007.

In 2024, both Mexico and ASEAN continued to register trade gains from U.S. trade reorientation, with both gaining share of U.S. trade faster than they had on average between 2017 and 2023.

China steadily lost share of U.S. imports across most sectors each year between 2017 and 2024, with the biggest declines in electronics, machinery, textiles, and apparel — resulting in a fall in share for those sectors of approximately 15 percentage points. (That loss of U.S. share was offset by China’s increase in global exports across those top sectors — by more than $500 billion since 2017.)

U.S. trade trends at a glance:

As of 2023

Learn more in McKinsey’s full report.

On the Horizon

Mike PeQueen: It’s inflation week with consumer prices reported on Wednesday, producer prices on Thursday, and import prices on Friday. Should be interesting.