An unusual divergence between GDP and new jobs shows worker productivity is making up for a slowdown in immigration and the labor force. AI could help.
By Harriet Torry of The WSJ. Excerpts:
"output per hour in the nonfarm business sector rose 2.1% last year. Growth has also averaged 2.1% over the past six years, a pickup from the 1.5% a year average from 2007 to 2019, and stronger than other Western economies."
"output per hour in the nonfarm business sector rose 2.1% last year. Growth has also averaged 2.1% over the past six years, a pickup from the 1.5% a year average from 2007 to 2019, and stronger than other Western economies."
"he number of new jobs needed to keep the unemployment rate stable, called the breakeven rate, has also fallen"
"“Zero job growth just doesn’t map into any kind of stability in terms of employment and whatnot,” Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller said at an economics conference in late February. “This would be the first time in my career, my life, that I saw an economy growing like this and zero job growth. I don’t even know quite how to think about this because I’ve never seen it before.”"
"Productivity growth is volatile and often driven by short-lived cyclical factors. The recent acceleration, though, might be durable. Economists say the Covid lockdowns and worker shortages that followed forced many companies to speed up automation. A hot labor market and shift to remote-work policies allowed greater numbers of workers to move into jobs they performed more productively."
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