Thursday, May 31, 2012

Higher U.S. Employment Due To Lower Productivity

It now appears that there wasn't much of a growth acceleration in the U.S. after all. Terms of trade adjusted GDP rose a mere 1.2% at an annualized rate and national income was only slightly stronger during the first quarter.

This means that the somewhat higher employment growth we saw during late last year and early this year didn't really reflect as most people thought, an acceleration of economic growth from the "so low it feels like a recession" level that the "Obama recovery" of the last three years has been characterized by. Instead it simply reflected a decline in productivity