Yes, you read those headlines right: real GDP contracted at a 2.9% rate according to revised data released this AM. That’s contracted, as in went down.
Nope. That was a truly lousy quarter but it’s highly unlikely to be repeated any time soon. The particularly bad winter weather played a role; both residential and commercial building were negative. Heavy inventory buildups in earlier quarters were reversed, which usually implies a positive bounce-back in coming quarters. Exports were revised down and imports up, so the trade deficit subtracted a large 1.5 points from the bottom line; that drag will likely diminish in coming quarters. Continue reading Jared Bernstein: Whoa! Whassup With That Big Negative Q1 GDP Revision?
Tag Archives: #Economy
Labor Supply and the Poor: Some Facts That Might (or Might Not) Surprise You | Jared Bernstein | On the Economy
It is way too common in this town to run into people who think that poor people are poor because they don’t work. Influential Congressman Paul Ryan has referred to safety net benefits as “a hammock” that create “poverty trap” and a culture of non-work, a rap as old as poverty itself. Various critics of poverty programs argue that their benefit structure dis-incentivizes work and are increasingly calling for more work requirements.
I needed to look into the numbers of working poor persons for a project I’m doing and I found the results kind of interesting (h/t: AS and DT). I suspect everyone brings different priors to this question, but some might be surprised by these results. Continue reading Labor Supply and the Poor: Some Facts That Might (or Might Not) Surprise You | Jared Bernstein | On the Economy
Where’s the Automation in the Productivity Accounts? | Jared Bernstein (@EconJared)|
Yesterday’s productivity report for 2014q1 was predictably negative—we already knew that real GDP fell in the quarter while employment grew apace—but I don’t read much into the noisy quarterly changes.
But then there’s this: year-over-year, productivity growth was up 1% last year and has averaged 0.8% since 2011. The figure below plots the yearly changes, which are themselves pretty noisy. What’s more instructive is the smooth trend through the numbers.
The trend suggests that the pace of productivity growth has decelerated since the first half of the 2000s and this begs an important question. There’s considerable speculation that the pace at which machines are displacing workers has accelerated. I keep hearing about “the end of work” based on the assumption that the pace of labor-saving technology—robots, AI—has accelerated.