Gold Goats 'n Guns Podcast Episode #246 - Peter St. Onge and the Importance of Higher Data Quality
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Feb 22, 2026 Peter St. Onge, an economist who analyzes monetary policy, labor markets and macro trends. They explore why official statistics can mislead and why recent GDP, productivity and wage signals matter. They discuss deportations, reshoring, trucking and how automation and AI reshape entry-level work and blue-collar opportunities. Politics, regulation and monetary history provide the backdrop.
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Reshoring Raises Wages By Eliminating Illegal Labor Arbitrage
- Low-end manufacturing that relied on undocumented workers cannot survive higher legal wages or tariffs, so reshoring raises wages and kills some firms but improves domestic conditions.
- Peter cites broom and meatpacking examples where replacing illegals forced employers to pay $20–25/hr or move production.
Use 80k Monthly Jobs As The Breakeven Benchmark
- Expect job growth to normalize; aim for ~80k monthly jobs to tread water and view recent 172k as healthy.
- Peter notes half a million people returned to work and real wages rose ~5% using official CPI (higher by Truflation).
AI Disrupts Middle White Collar Jobs First
- AI is uneven: it automates repetitive white-collar and creative tasks first (paralegals, low-end tech, extras), hurting middle-tier jobs while augmenting high-skill roles.
- Peter cites OnlyFans revenue drop and Hollywood/lawyer disruption as early signals.