Wealth & Money Quote by J. D. Hayworth

Nothing sells a political story like a fat percentage and a holiday on the calendar. Hayworth’s line takes an employment statistic and turns it into a ceremonial prop: 95 percent becomes not just data, but a moral verdict on the state of the nation, timed neatly for Labor Day optics. The intent is boosterism with a purpose. If nearly everyone “is employed,” then the economy is healthy, leadership is competent, and complaints about wages, security, or inequality can be reframed as sourness rather than diagnosis.

The phrasing does extra ideological work. “Eligible workforce” quietly narrows the frame to those counted as employable, skirting the people who fall outside the statistic: discouraged workers, underemployed part-timers, caregivers pushed out of paid labor, the precariously employed whose hours evaporate with a manager’s whim. “Pumping money back into economy” treats labor less as human effort than as a circulatory system for consumption. Workers are celebrated less for dignity or power than for their function as cash conduits.

Labor Day is the tell. The holiday historically nods to organized labor, collective bargaining, and the conflict that built weekends and safety rules. Hayworth’s sentence repurposes it as a feel-good KPI moment, a patriotic earnings report. It’s a classic politician’s pivot: replace the messy politics of work with the clean math of employment rates, then call that “exceptionally good news.” The subtext isn’t just optimism; it’s agenda-setting. If the headline number is high, the conversation moves away from who benefits, who’s stuck, and what kind of jobs the economy is actually producing.