Worker to 'Welfare' Beneficiary Ratio is Now About 1.0

I read something recently about Medicaid beneficiaries will soon top 100 million persons.  That really stood out to me as I know Medicare (old folks) beneficiaries are about 62 million persons (and rising at ~10K per day).

When you add Medicare and Medicaid alone, you get 162 million beneficiaries.

But wait, the US Workforce is only 164 million persons, meaning that each worker must theoretically take care of themselves, their dependents AND also take care of medical costs of another person. We know that they can’t and the government has to borrow the money. 

I had been led to believe that the worker to benificiary ratio was 2:1. Now it’s easily 1:1. What am I missing? I’m not claiming to be an expert in these areas, so chime-in if you have a constructive criticism.

First, the following chart shows the workforce in America:

The US Workforce Is About 165 million Persons

Medicaid

The actual current number of Medicaid beneficiaries is up to 91 million in 2023. When you add up Medicaid and Enrollment is up sharply (22 million) due to covid, covid lockdowns and job losses. But now that Covid is over, why are the number of beneficiaries rising? They should be falling. One possible explanation is that the employment situation is not recovering despite what the BLS says. Also, there is nothing more permanent than a government program!

Medicare

Medicare enrollment is a bit over 61.5 million.

Social Security and Disability 

 

Social Security/Disability is about 66 million persons. It’s a similar number to the number of people on Medicare — makes sense.

Section 8 Housing Benefits

From The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

 

Food Stamps (SNAP) 

 

The most recent data indicates that 41 million persons receive SNAP benefits averaging about $231 per month. That works out to be $119 Billion cost to the US government.

 

Obamacare

From Forbes Magazine, “A record 15.9 million Americans have purchased individual coverage under the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare for this year.”

You can see now that the number of people receiving benefits actually exceeds the number of people officially working (if you can trust the statistics, which is a big if).

Add the unfavorable worker to beneficiary ratio to the many unsustainable trends in America’s decay, decline and collapse.