Recent U.S. Economic Performance and Prospects for Future Growth

Recent U.S. Economic Performance and Prospects for Future Growth. Dale Jorgenson, April 2, 2019, Paper, "The sharp slowdown of U.S. productivity growth since the Great Recession in 2008 has been widely noted and there is a vigorous debate about the causes of the slowdown and the outlook for future economic growth¹. Growth in the medium term will be driven by growth in capital, total factor productivity and revival of participation rates with a smaller role for improvements in educational attainment. Jorgenson et al. (2017), for example, give a 10-year projection of 1.8% per year for GDP growth, derived from a 0.50 percentage point contribution of hours growth, 0.45 points from TFP, 0.76 from capital deepening, and only 0.12 from labor quality growth. Fernald (2016) gives a similar projection of 0.55 points for hours growth and 1.1 points for labor productivity growth. Our overall conclusion is that educational attainment will play a diminished role in future U.S. economic growth." Link