Category Archives: Econ Data

How Fast is GDP Growing?: A Curiosum

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A.  How Fast is GDP Growing?

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released today its first estimate (what it calls it’s Advance Estimate) for the growth of GDP and its components for the third quarter of 2019.  Most of it looked basically as one would expect, with an estimate of real GDP growth of 1.9% in the quarter, or about the same as the 2.0% growth rate of the second quarter.  There has been a continued slowdown in private investment (which I will discuss below), but this has been offset by an expansion in government spending under Trump, coupled with steady growth in personal consumption expenditures (as one would expect with an economy now at full employment).

But there was a surprise on the last page of the report, in Appendix Table A.  This table provides growth rates of some miscellaneous aggregates that contribute to GDP growth, as well as their contribution to overall GDP growth.  One line shown is for “motor vehicle output”.  What is surprising is that the growth rate shown, at an annualized rate, is an astounding 32.6%!  The table also indicates that real GDP excluding motor vehicle output would have grown at just 1.2% in the quarter.  (I get 1.14% using the underlying, non-rounded, numbers, but these are close.)  The difference is shown in the chart above.

Some points should be noted.  While all these figures provided by the BEA are shown at annualized growth rates, one needs to keep in mind that the underlying figures are for growth in just one quarter.  Hence the quarterly growth will be roughly one-quarter of the annual rate, plus the effects of compounding.  For the motor vehicle output numbers, the estimated growth in the quarter was 7.3%, which if compounded over four quarters would yield the 32.6% annualized rate.  One should also note that the quarterly output figures of this sector are quite volatile historically, and while there has not been a change as large as the 32.6% since 2009/10 (at the time of the economic downturn and recovery) there have been a few quarters when it was in the 20s.

But what appears especially odd, but also possibly interesting to those trying to understand how the GDP accounts are estimated, is why there should have been such a tremendously high growth in the sector, of 32.6%, when the workers at General Motors were on strike for half of September (starting on September 15).  GM is the largest car manufacturer in the US, its production plummeted during the strike, yet the GDP figures indicate that motor vehicle output not only soared in the quarter, but by itself raised overall GDP growth to 1.9% from a 1.2% rate had the sector been flat.

This is now speculation on my part, but I suspect the reason stems from the warning the BEA regularly provides that the initial GDP estimates that are issued just one month after the end of the quarter being covered, really are preliminary and partial.  The BEA receives data on the economy from numerous sources, and a substantial share of that data is incomplete just one month following the end of a quarter.  For motor vehicle production, I would not be surprised if the BEA might only be receiving data for two months (July and August in this case), in time for this initial estimate.  They would then estimate the third month based on past patterns and seasonality.

But because of the strike, past patterns will be misleading.  Production at GM may have been ramped up in July and August in anticipation of the strike, and a mechanical extrapolation of this into September, while normally fine, might have been especially misleading this time.

I stress that this is speculation on my part.  Revised estimates of GDP growth in the third quarter, based on more complete data, will be issued in late November and then again, with even more data, in late December.  We will see what these estimates say.  I would not be surprised if the growth figure for GDP is revised substantially downwards.

B.  Growth in Nonresidential Private Fixed Investment

The figures released by the BEA today also include its estimates for private fixed investment.  The nonresidential portion of this is basically business investment, and it is interesting to track what it has been doing over the last few years.  The argument made for the Trump/Republican tax cuts pushed through Congress in December 2017 were that they would spur business investment.  Corporate profit taxes were basically cut in half.

But the figures show no spur in business investment following their taxes being slashed.  Nonresidential private fixed investment was growing at a relatively high rate already in the fourth quarter of 2017 (similar to rates seen between mid-2013 and mid-2014, and there even was growth of 11.2% in the second quarter of 2014).  This continued through the first half of 2018.  But growth since has fallen steadily, and is now even negative, with a decline of 3.0% in the third quarter of 2019:

There is no indication here that slashing corporate profit taxes (and other business taxes) led to greater business investment.

Andrew Yang’s Proposed $1,000 per Month Grant: Issues Raised in the Democratic Debate

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A.  Introduction

This is the second in a series of posts on this blog addressing issues that have come up during the campaign of the candidates for the Democratic nomination for president, and which specifically came up in the October 15 Democratic debate.  As flagged in the previous blog post, one can find a transcript of the debate at the Washington Post website, and a video of the debate at the CNN website.

This post will address Andrew Yang’s proposal of a $1,000 per month grant for every adult American (which I will mostly refer to here as a $12,000 grant per year).  This policy is called a universal basic income (or UBI), and has been explored in a few other countries as well.  It has received increased attention in recent years, in part due to the sharp growth in income inequality in the US of recent decades, that began around 1980.  If properly designed, such a $12,000 grant per adult per year could mark a substantial redistribution of income.  But the degree of redistribution depends directly on how the funding would be raised.  As we will discuss below, Yang’s specific proposals for that are problematic.  There are also other issues with such a program which, even if well designed, calls into question whether it would be the best approach to addressing inequality.  All this will be discussed below.

First, however, it is useful to address two misconceptions that appear to be widespread.  One is that many appear to believe that the $12,000 per adult per year would not need to come from somewhere.  That is, everyone would receive it, but no one would have to provide the funds to pay for it.  That is not possible.  The economy produces so much, whatever is produced accrues as incomes to someone, and if one is to transfer some amount ($12,000 here) to each adult then the amounts so transferred will need to come from somewhere.  That is, this is a redistribution.  There is nothing wrong with a redistribution, if well designed, but it is not a magical creation of something out of nothing.

The other misconception, and asserted by Yang as the primary rationale for such a $12,000 per year grant, is that a “Fourth Industrial Revolution” is now underway which will lead to widespread structural unemployment due to automation.  This issue was addressed in the previous post on this blog, where I noted that the forecast job losses due to automation in the coming years are not out of line with what has been the norm in the US for at least the last 150 years.  There has always been job disruption and turnover, and while assistance should certainly be provided to workers whose jobs will be affected, what is expected in the years going forward is similar to what we have had in the past.

It is also a good thing that workers should not be expected to rely on a $12,000 per year grant to make up for a lost job.  Median earnings of a full-time worker was an estimated $50,653 in 2018, according to the Census Bureau.  A grant of $12,000 would not go far in making up for this.

So the issue is one of redistribution, and to be fair to Yang, I should note that he posts on his campaign website a fair amount of detail on how the program would be paid for.  I make use of that information below.  But the numbers do not really add up, and for a candidate who champions math (something I admire), this is disappointing.

B.  Yang’s Proposal of a $1,000 Monthly Grant to All Americans

First of all, the overall cost.  This is easy to calculate, although not much discussed.  The $12,000 per year grant would go to every adult American, who Yang defines as all those over the age of 18.  There were very close to 250 million Americans over the age of 18 in 2018, so at $12,000 per adult the cost would be $3.0 trillion.

This is far from a small amount.  With GDP of approximately $20 trillion in 2018 ($20.58 trillion to be more precise), such a program would come to 15% of GDP.  That is huge.  Total taxes and revenues received by the federal government (including all income taxes, all taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and everything else) only came to $3.3 trillion in FY2018.  This is only 10% more than the $3.0 trillion that would have been required for Yang’s $12,000 per adult grants.  Or put another way, taxes and other government revenues would need almost to be doubled (raised by 91%) to cover the cost of the program.  As another comparison, the cost of the tax cuts that Trump and the Republican leadership rushed through Congress in December 2017 was forecast to be an estimated $150 billion per year.  That was a big revenue loss.  But the Yang proposal would cost 20 times as much.

With such amounts to be raised, Yang proposes on his campaign website a number of taxes and other measures to fund the program.  One is a value-added tax (VAT), and from his very brief statements during the debates but also in interviews with the media, one gets the impression that all of the program would be funded by a value-added tax.  But that is not the case.  He in fact says on his campaign website that the VAT, at the rate and coverage he would set, would raise only about $800 billion.  This would come only to a bit over a quarter (27%) of the $3.0 trillion needed.  There is a need for much more besides, and to his credit, he presents plans for most (although not all) of this.

So what does he propose specifically?:

a) A New Value-Added Tax:

First, and as much noted, he is proposing that the US institute a VAT at a rate of 10%.  He estimates it would raise approximately $800 billion a year, and for the parameters for the tax that he sets, that is a reasonable estimate.  A VAT is common in most of the rest of the world as it is a tax that is relatively easy to collect, with internal checks that make underreporting difficult.  It is in essence a tax on consumption, similar to a sales tax but levied only on the added value at each stage in the production chain.  Yang notes that a 10% rate would be approximately half of the rates found in Europe (which is more or less correct – the rates in Europe in fact vary by country and are between 17 and 27% in the EU countries, but the rates for most of the larger economies are in the 19 to 22% range).

A VAT is a tax on what households consume, and for that reason a regressive tax.  The poor and middle classes who have to spend all or most of their current incomes to meet their family needs will pay a higher share of their incomes under such a tax than higher-income households will.  For this reason, VAT systems as implemented will often exempt (or tax at a reduced rate) certain basic goods such as foodstuffs and other necessities, as such goods account for a particularly high share of the expenditures of the poor and middle classes.  Yang is proposing this as well.  But even with such exemptions (or lower VAT rates), a VAT tax is still normally regressive, just less so.

Furthermore, households will in the end be paying the tax, as prices will rise to reflect the new tax.  Yang asserts that some of the cost of the VAT will be shifted to businesses, who would not be able, he says, to pass along the full cost of the tax.  But this is not correct.  In the case where the VAT applies equally to all goods, the full 10% will be passed along as all goods are affected equally by the now higher cost, and relative prices will not change.  To the extent that certain goods (such as foodstuffs and other necessities) are exempted, there could be some shift in demand to such goods, but the degree will depend on the extent to which they are substitutable for the goods which are taxed.  If they really are necessities, such substitution is likely to be limited.

A VAT as Yang proposes thus would raise a substantial amount of revenues, and the $800 billion figure is a reasonable estimate.  This total would be on the order of half of all that is now raised by individual income taxes in the US (which was $1,684 billion in FY2018).  But one cannot avoid that such a tax is paid by households, who will face higher prices on what they purchase, and the tax will almost certainly be regressive, impacting the poor and middle classes the most (with the extent dependent on how many and which goods are designated as subject to a reduced VAT rate, or no VAT at all).  But whether regressive or not, everyone will be affected and hence no one will actually see a net increase of $12,000 in purchasing power from the proposed grant  Rather, it will be something less.

b)  A Requirement to Choose Either the $12,000 Grants, or Participation in Existing Government Social Programs

Second, Yang’s proposal would require that households who currently benefit from government social programs, such as for welfare or food stamps, would be required to give up those benefits if they choose to receive the $12,000 per adult per year.  He says this will lead to reduced government spending on such social programs of $500 to $600 billion a year.

There are two big problems with this.  The first is that those programs are not that large.  While it is not fully clear how expansive Yang’s list is of the programs which would then be denied to recipients of the $12,000 grants, even if one included all those included in what the Congressional Budget Office defines as “Income Security” (“unemployment compensation, Supplemental Security Income, the refundable portion of the earned income and child tax credits, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [food stamps], family support, child nutrition, and foster care”), the total spent in FY2018 was only $285 billion.  You cannot save $500 to $600 billion if you are only spending $285 billion.

Second, such a policy would be regressive in the extreme.  Poor and near-poor households, and only such households, would be forced to choose whether to continue to receive benefits under such existing programs, or receive the $12,000 per adult grant per year.  If they are now receiving $12,000 or more in such programs per adult household member, they would receive no benefit at all from what is being called a “universal” basic income grant.  To the extent they are now receiving less than $12,000 from such programs (per adult), they may gain some benefit, but less than $12,000 worth.  For example, if they are now receiving $10,000 in benefits (per adult) from current programs, their net gain would be just $2,000 (setting aside for the moment the higher prices they would also now need to pay due to the 10% VAT).  Furthermore, only the poor and near-poor who are being supported by such government programs will see such an effective reduction in their $12,000 grants.  The rich and others, who benefit from other government programs, will not see such a cut in the programs or tax subsidies that benefit them.

c)  Savings in Other Government Programs 

Third, Yang argues that with his universal basic income grant, there would be a reduction in government spending of $100 to $200 billion a year from lower expenditures on “health care, incarceration, homelessness services and the like”, as “people would be able to take better care of themselves”.  This is clearly more speculative.  There might be some such benefits, and hopefully would be, but without experience to draw on it is impossible to say how important this would be and whether any such savings would add up to such a figure.  Furthermore, much of those savings, were they to follow, would accrue not to the federal government but rather to state and local governments.  It is at the state and local level where most expenditures on incarceration and homelessness, and to a lesser degree on health care, take place.  They would not accrue to the federal budget.

d)  Increased Tax Revenues From a Larger Economy

Fourth, Yang states that with the $12,000 grants the economy would grow larger – by 12.5% he says (or $2.5 trillion in increased GDP).  He cites a 2017 study produced by scholars at the Roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning non-profit think tank based in New York, which examined the impact on the overall economy, under several scenarios, of precisely such a $12,000 annual grant per adult.

There are, however, several problems:

i)  First, under the specific scenario that is closest to the Yang proposal (where the grants would be funded through a combination of taxes and other actions), the impact on the overall economy forecast in the Roosevelt Institute study would be either zero (when net distribution effects are neutral), or small (up to 2.6%, if funded through a highly progressive set of taxes).

ii)  The reason for this result is that the model used by the Roosevelt Institute researchers assumes that the economy is far from full employment, and that economic output is then entirely driven by aggregate demand.  Thus with a new program such as the $12,000 grants, which is fully paid for by taxes or other measures, there is no impact on aggregate demand (and hence no impact on economic output) when net distributional effects are assumed to be neutral.  If funded in a way that is not distributionally neutral, such as through the use of highly progressive taxes, then there can be some effect, but it would be small.

In the Roosevelt Institute model, there is only a substantial expansion of the economy (of about 12.5%) in a scenario where the new $12,000 grants are not funded at all, but rather purely and entirely added to the fiscal deficit and then borrowed.  And with the current fiscal deficit now about 5% of GDP under Trump (unprecedented even at 5% in a time of full employment, other than during World War II), and the $12,000 grants coming to $3.0 trillion or 15% of GDP, this would bring the overall deficit to 20% of GDP!

Few economists would accept that such a scenario is anywhere close to plausible.  First of all, the current unemployment rate of 3.5% is at a 50 year low.  The economy is at full employment.  The Roosevelt Institute researchers are asserting that this is fictitious, and that the economy could expand by a substantial amount (12.5% in their scenario) if the government simply spent more and did not raise taxes to cover any share of the cost.  They also assume that a fiscal deficit of 20% of GDP would not have any consequences, such as on interest rates.  Note also an implication of their approach is that the government spending could be on anything, including, for example, the military.  They are using a purely demand-led model.

iii)  Finally, even if one assumes the economy will grow to be 12.5% larger as a result of the grants, even the Roosevelt Institute researchers do not assume it will be instantaneous.  Rather, in their model the economy becomes 12.5% larger only after eight years.  Yang is implicitly assuming it will be immediate.

There are therefore several problems in the interpretation and use of the Roosevelt Institute study.  Their scenario for 12.5% growth is not the one that follows from Yang’s proposals (which is funded, at least to a degree), nor would GDP jump immediately by such an amount.  And the Roosevelt Insitute model of the economy is one that few economists would accept as applicable in the current state of the economy, with its 3.5% unemployment.

But there is also a further problem.  Even assuming GDP rises instantly by 12.5%, leading to an increase in GDP of $2.5 trillion (from a current $20 trillion), Yang then asserts that this higher GDP will generate between $800 and $900 billion in increased federal tax revenue.  That would imply federal taxes of 32 to 36% on the extra output.  But that is implausible.  Total federal tax (and all other) revenues are only 17.5% of GDP.  While in a progressive tax system the marginal tax revenues received on an increase in income will be higher than at the average tax rate, the US system is no longer very progressive.  And the rates are far from what they would need to be twice as high at the margin (32 to 36%) as they are at the average (17.5%).  A more plausible estimate of the increased federal tax revenues from an economy that somehow became 12.5% larger would not be the $800 to $900 billion Yang calculates, but rather about half that.

Might such a universal basic income grant affect the size of the economy through other, more orthodox, channels?  That is certainly possible, although whether it would lead to a higher or to a lower GDP is not clear.  Yang argues that it would lead recipients to manage their health better, to stay in school longer, to less criminality, and to other such social benefits.  Evidence on this is highly limited, but it is in principle conceivable in a program that does properly redistribute income towards those with lower incomes (where, as discussed above, Yang’s specific program has problems).  Over fairly long periods of time (generations really) this could lead to a larger and stronger economy.

But one will also likely see effects working in the other direction.  There might be an increase in spouses (wives usually) who choose to stay home longer to raise their children, or an increase in those who decide to retire earlier than they would have before, or an increase in the average time between jobs by those who lose or quit from one job before they take another, and other such impacts.  Such impacts are not negative in themselves, if they reflect choices voluntarily made and now possible due to a $12,000 annual grant.  But they all would have the effect of reducing GDP, and hence the tax revenues that follow from some level of GDP.

There might therefore be both positive and negative impacts on GDP.  However, the impact of each is likely to be small, will mostly only develop over time, and will to some extent cancel each other out.  What is likely is that there will be little measurable change in GDP in whichever direction.

e)  Other Taxes

Fifth, Yang would institute other taxes to raise further amounts.  He does not specify precisely how much would be raised or what these would be, but provides a possible list and says they would focus on top earners and on pollution.  The list includes a financial transactions tax, ending the favorable tax treatment now given to capital gains and carried interest, removing the ceiling on wages subject to the Social Security tax, and a tax on carbon emissions (with a portion of such a tax allocated to the $12,000 grants).

What would be raised by such new or increased taxes would depend on precisely what the rates would be and what they would cover.  But the total that would be required, under the assumption that the amounts that would be raised (or saved, when existing government programs are cut) from all the measures listed above are as Yang assumes, would then be between $500 and $800 billion (as the revenues or savings from the programs listed above sum to $2.2 to $2.5 trillion).  That is, one might need from these “other taxes” as much as would be raised by the proposed new VAT.

But as noted in the discussion above, the amounts that would be raised by those measures are often likely to be well short of what Yang says will be the case.  One cannot save $500 to $600 billion in government programs for the poor and near-poor if government is spending only $285 billion on such programs, for example.  A more plausible figure for what might be raised by those proposals would be on the order of $1 trillion, mostly from the VAT, and not the $2.2 to $2.5 trillion Yang says will be the case.

C.  An Assessment

Yang provides a fair amount of detail on how he would implement a universal basic income grant of $12,000 per adult per year, and for a political campaign it is an admirable amount of detail.  But there are still, as discussed above, numerous gaps that prevent anything like a complete assessment of the program.  But a number of points are evident.

To start, the figures provided are not always plausible.  The math just does not add up, and for someone who extolls the need for good math (and rightly so), this is disappointing.  One cannot save $500 to $600 billion in programs for the poor and near-poor when only $285 billion is being spent now.  One cannot assume that the economy will jump immediately by 12.5% (which even the Roosevelt Institute model forecasts would only happen in eight years, and under a scenario that is the opposite of that of the Yang program, and in a model that few economists would take as credible in any case).  Even if the economy did jump by so much immediately, one would not see an increase of $800 to $900 billion in federal tax revenues from this but rather more like half that.  And other such issues.

But while the proposal is still not fully spelled out (in particular on which other taxes would be imposed to fill out the program), we can draw a few conclusions.  One is that the one group in society who will clearly not gain from the $12,000 grants is the poor and near-poor, who currently make use of food stamp and other such programs and decide to stay with those programs.  They would then not be eligible for the $12,000 grants.  And keep in mind that $12,000 per adult grants are not much, if you have nothing else.  One would still be below the federal poverty line if single (where the poverty line in 2019 is $12,490) or in a household with two adults and two or more children (where the poverty line, with two children, is $25,750).  On top of this, such households (like all households) will pay higher prices for at least some of what they purchase due to the new VAT.  So such households will clearly lose.

Furthermore, those poor or near-poor households who do decide to switch, thus giving up their eligibility for food stamps and other such programs, will see a net gain that is substantially less than $12,000 per adult.  The extent will depend on how much they receive now from those social programs.  Those who receive the most (up to $12,000 per adult), who are presumably also most likely to be the poorest among them, will lose the most.  This is not a structure that makes sense for a program that is purportedly designed to be of most benefit to the poorest.

For middle and higher-income households the net gain (or loss) from the program will depend on the full set of taxes that would be needed to fund the program.  One cannot say who will gain and who will lose until the structure of that full set of taxes is made clear.  This is of course not surprising, as one needs to keep in mind that this is a program of redistribution:  Funds will be raised (by taxes) that disproportionately affect certain groups, to be distributed then in the $12,000 grants.  Some will gain and some will lose, but overall the balance has to be zero.

One can also conclude that such a program, providing for a universal basic income with grants of $12,000 per adult, will necessarily be hugely expensive.  It would cost $3 trillion a year, which is 15% of GDP.  Funding it would require raising all federal tax and other revenue by 91% (excluding any offset by cuts in government social programs, which are however unlikely to amount to anything close to what Yang assumes).  Raising funds of such magnitude is completely unrealistic.  And yet despite such costs, the grants provided of $12,000 per adult would be poverty level incomes for those who do not have a job or other source of support.

One could address this by scaling back the grant, from $12,000 to something substantially less, but then it becomes less meaningful to an individual.  The fundamental problem is the design as a universal grant, to all adults.  While this might be thought to be politically attractive, any such program then ends up being hugely expensive.

The alternative is to design a program that is specifically targeted to those who need such support.  Rather than attempting to hide the distributional consequences in a program that claims to be universal (but where certain groups will gain and certain groups will lose, once one takes fully into account how it will be funded), make explicit the redistribution that is being sought.  With this clear, one can then design a focussed program that addresses that redistribution aim.

Finally, one should recognize that there are other policies as well that might achieve those aims that may not require explicit government-intermediated redistribution.  For example, Senator Cory Booker in the October 15 debate noted that a $15 per hour minimum wage would provide more to those now at the minimum wage than a $12,000 annual grant.  This remark was not much noted, but what Senator Booker said was true.  The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 per hour.  This is low – indeed, it is less (in real terms) than what it was when Harry Truman was president.  If the minimum wage were raised to $15 per hour, a worker now at the $7.25 rate would see an increase in income of $15.00 – $7.25 = $7.75 per hour, and over a year of 40 hour weeks would see an increase in income of $7.75 x 40 x 52 = $16,120.00.  This is well more than a $12,000 annual grant would provide.

Republican politicians have argued that raising the minimum wage by such a magnitude will lead to widespread unemployment.  But there is no evidence that changes in the minimum wage that we have periodically had in the past (whether federal or state level minimum wages) have had such an adverse effect.  There is of course certainly some limit to how much it can be raised, but one should recognize that the minimum wage would now be over $24 per hour if it had been allowed to grow at the same pace as labor productivity since the late 1960s.

Income inequality is a real problem in the US, and needs to be addressed.  But there are problems with Yang’s specific version of a universal basic income.  While one may be able to fix at least some of those problems and come up with something more reasonable, it would still be massively disruptive given the amounts to be raised.  And politically impossible.  A focus on more targeted programs, as well as on issues such as the minimum wage, are likely to prove far more productive.

The “Threat” of Job Losses is Nothing New and Not to be Feared: Issues Raised in the Democratic Debate

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A.  Introduction

The televised debate held October 15 between twelve candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination covered a large number of issues.  Some were clear, but many were not.  The debate format does not allow for much explanation or nuance.  And while some of the positions taken refected sound economics, others did not.

In a series of upcoming blog posts, starting with this one, I will review several of the issues raised, focussing on the economics and sometimes the simple arithmetic (which the candidates often got wrong).  And while the debate covered a broad range of issues, I will limit my attention here to the economic ones.

This post will look at the concern that was raised (initially in a question from one of the moderators) that the US will soon be facing a massive loss of jobs due to automation.  A figure of “a quarter of American jobs” was cited.  All the candidates basically agreed, and offered various solutions.  But there is a good deal of confusion over the issue, starting with the question of whether such job “losses” are unprecedented (they are not) and then in some of the solutions proposed.

A transcript of the debate can be found at the Washington Post website, which one can refer to for the precise wording of the questions and responses.  Unfortunately it does not provide pages or line numbers to refer to, but most of the economic issues were discussed in the first hour of the three hour debate.  Alternatively, one can watch the debate at the CNN.com website.  The discussion on job losses starts at the 32:30 minute mark of the first of the four videos CNN posted at its site.

B.  Job Losses and Productivity Growth

A topic on which there was apparently broad agreement across the candidates was that an unprecedented number of jobs will be “lost” in the US in the coming years due to automation, and that this is a horrifying prospect that needs to be addressed with urgency.  Erin Burnett, one of the moderators, introduced it, citing a study that she said concluded that “about a quarter of American jobs could be lost to automation in just the next 10 years”.  While the name of the study was not explicitly cited, it appears to be one issued by the Brookings Institution in January 2019, with Mark Muro as the principal author.  It received a good deal of attention when it came out, with the focus on its purported conclusion that there would be a loss of a quarter of US jobs by 2030 (see here, here, here, here, and/or here, for examples).

[Actually, the Brookings study did not say that.  Nor was its focus on the overall impact on the number of jobs due to automation.  Rather, its purpose was to look at how automation may differentially affect different geographic zones across the US (states and metropolitan areas), as well as different occupations, as jobs vary in their degree of exposure to possible automation.  Some jobs can be highly automated with technologies that already exist today, while others cannot.  And as the Brookings authors explain, they are applying geographically a methodology that had in fact been developed earlier by the McKinsey Global Institute, presented in reports issued in January 2017 and in December 2017.  The December 2017 report is most directly relevant, and found that 23% of “jobs” in the US (measured in terms of hours of work) may be automated by 2030 using technologies that have already been demonstrated as technically possible (although not necessarily financially worthwhile as yet).  And this would have been the total over a 14 year period starting from their base year of 2016.  This was for their “midpoint scenario”, and McKinsey properly stresses that there is a very high degree of uncertainty surrounding it.]

The candidates offered various answers on how to address this perceived crisis (which I will address below), but it is worth looking first at whether this is indeed a pending crisis.

The answer is no.  While the study cited said that perhaps a quarter of jobs could be “lost to automation” by 2030 (starting from their base year of 2016), such a pace of job loss is in fact not out of line with the norm.  It is not that much different from what has been happening in the US economy for the last 150 years, or longer.

Job losses “due to automation” is just another way of saying productivity has grown.  Fewer workers are needed to produce some given level of output, or equivalently, more output can be produced for a given number of workers.  As a simple example, suppose some factory produces 100 units of some product, and to start has 100 employees.  Output per employee is then 100/100, or a ratio of 1.0.  Suppose then that over a 14 year period, the number of workers needed (following automation of some of the tasks) reduces the number of employees to just 75 to produce that 100 units of output (where that figure of 75 workers includes those who will now be maintaining and operating the new machines, as well as those workers in the economy as a whole who made the machines, with those scaled to account for the lifetime of the machines).  The productivity of the workers would then have grown to 100/75, or a ratio of 1.333.  Over a 14 year period, that implies growth in productivity of 2.1% a year.  More accurately, the McKinsey estimate was that 23% of jobs might be automated, and with this the increase in productivity would be to 100/77 = 1.30.  The growth rate over 14 years would then be 1.9% per annum.

Such an increase in productivity is not outside the norm for the US.  Indeed, it matches what the US has experienced over at least the last century and a half.  The chart at the top of this post shows how GDP per capita has grown since 1870.  The chart is plotted in logarithms, and those of you who remember their high school math will recall that a straight line in such a graph depicts a constant rate of growth.  An earlier version of this chart was originally prepared for a prior post on this blog (where one can find further discussion of its implications), and it has been updated here to reflect GDP growth in recent years (using BEA data, with the earlier data taken from the Maddison Project).

What is remarkable is how steady that rate of growth in GDP per capita has been since 1870.  One straight line fits it extraordinarily well for the entire period, with a growth rate of 1.9% a year (or 1.86% to be more precise).  And while the US is now falling below that long-term trend (since around 2008, from the onset of the economic collapse in the last year of the Bush administration), the deviation of recent years is not that much different from an earlier such deviation between the late 1940s to the mid-1960s.  It remains to be seen whether there will be a similar catch-up to the long-term trend in the coming years.

One might reasonably argue that GDP per capita is not quite productivity, which would be GDP per employee.  Over very long periods of time population and the number of workers in that population will tend to grow at a similar pace, but we could also look at GDP per employee:

This chart is based on BEA data, the agency which issues the official GDP accounts for the US, for both real GDP and the number of employees (in full time equivalent terms, so part-time workers are counted in proportion to the number of hours they work).  The figures unfortunately only go back to 1929, the oldest year for which the BEA has issued estimates.  Note also that the rise in GDP during World War II looks relatively modest here, but that is because measures of “real” GDP (when carefully estimated using standard procedures) can deviate more and more as one goes back in time from the base year for prices (2012 here), coupled with major changes in the structure of production (such as during a major war).  But the BEA figures are the best available.

Once again one finds that the pace of productivity growth was remarkably stable over the period, with a growth rate here of 1.74% a year.  It was lower during the Great Depression years, but then recovered during World War II, and was then above the 1929 to 2018 trend from the early 1950s to 1980.  And the same straight line (meaning a constant growth rate) then fit extremely well from 1980 to 2010.

Since 2010 the growth in labor productivity has been more modest, averaging just 0.5% a year from 2010 to 2018.  An important question going forward is whether the path will return to the previous trend.  If it does, the implication is that there will be more job turnover for at least a temporary period.  If it does not, and productivity growth does not return to the path it has been on since 1929, the US as a whole will not be able to enjoy the growth in overall living standards the economy had made possible before.

The McKinsey numbers for what productivity growth might be going forward, of possibly 1.9% a year, are therefore not out of line with what the economy has actually experienced over the years.  It matches the pace as measured by GDP per capita, and while the 1.74% a year found for the last almost 90 years for the measure based on GDP per employee is a bit less, they are close.  And keep in mind that the McKinsey estimate (of 1.9% growth in productivity over 14 years) is of what might be possible, with a broad range of uncertainty over what will actually happen.

The estimate that “about” a quarter of jobs may be displaced by 2030 is therefore not out of line with what the US has experienced for perhaps a century and a half.  Such disruption is certainly still significant, and should be met with measures to assist workers to transition from jobs that have been automated away to the jobs then in need of more workers.  We have not, as a country, managed this very well in the past.  But the challenge is not new.

What will those new jobs be?  While there are needs that are clear to anyone now (as Bernie Sanders noted, which I will discuss below), most of the new jobs will likely be in fields that do not even exist right now.  A careful study by Daron Acemoglu (of MIT) and Pascual Restrepo (of Boston University), published in the American Economic Review in 2018, found that about 60% of the growth in net new jobs in the US between 1980 and 2015 (an increase of 52 million, from 90 million in 1980 to 142 million in 2015) were in occupations where the specific title of the job (as defined in surveys carried out by the Census Bureau) did not even exist in 1980.  And there was a similar share of those with new job titles over the shorter periods of 1990 to 2015 or 2000 to 2015.  There is no reason not to expect this to continue going forward.  Most new jobs are likely to be in positions that are not even defined at this point.

C.  What Would the Candidates Do?

I will not comment on all the answers provided by the candidates (some of which were indecipherable), but just a few.

Bernie Sanders provided perhaps the best response by saying there is much that needs to be done, requiring millions of workers, and if government were to proceed with the programs needed, there would be plenty of jobs.  He cited specifically the need to rebuild our infrastructure (which he rightly noted is collapsing, and where I would add is an embarrassment to anyone who has seen the infrastructure in other developed economies).  He said 15 million workers would be required for that.  He also cited the Green New Deal (requiring 20 million workers), as well as needs for childcare, for education, for medicine, and in other areas.

There certainly are such needs.  Whether we can organize and pay for such programs is of course critical and would need to be addressed.  But if they can be, there will certainly be millions of workers required.

Sanders was also asked by the moderator specifically about his federal jobs guarantee proposal (and indeed the jobs topic was introduced this way).  But such a policy proposal is more problematic, and separate from the issue of whether the economy will need so many workers.  It is not clear how such a jobs guarantee, provided by the federal government, would work.  The Sanders campaign website provides almost no detail.  But a number of questions need to be addressed.  To start, would such a program be viewed as a temporary backstop for a worker, to be used when he or she cannot find another reasonable job at a wage they would accept, or something permanent?  If permanent, one is really talking more of an expanded public sector, and that does not seem to be the intention of a jobs guarantee program.  But if a backstop, how would the wage be set?  If too high, no workers would want to leave and take a different job, and the program would not be a backstop.  And would all workers in such a program be paid the same, or different based on their skills?  Presumably one would pay an engineer working on the design of infrastructure projects more than someone with just a high school degree.  But how would these be determined?  Also, with a job guarantee, can someone be fired?  Suppose they often do not show up for work?

So there are a number of issues to address, and the answers are not clear.  But more fundamentally, if there is not a shortage of jobs but rather of workers (keep in mind that the unemployment rate is now at a 50 year low), why does one need such a guarantee?  It might be warranted (on a temporary basis) during an economic downturn, when unemployment is high, but why now, when unemployment is low?  [October 28 update:  The initial version of this post had an additional statement here saying that the federal government already had “something close to a job guarantee”, as you could always join the Army.  However, as a reader pointed out, while that once may have been true, it no longer is.  So that sentence has been deleted.]

Andrew Yang responded next, arguing for his proposal of a universal basic income that would provide every adult in the country with a grant of $1,000 per month, no questions asked.  There are many issues with such a proposal, which I will address in a subsequent blog post, but would note here that his basic argument for such a universal grant follows from his assertion that jobs will be scarce due to automation.  He repeatedly asserted in the debate that we have now entered into what has been referred to as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, where automation will take over most jobs and millions will be forced out of work.

But as noted above, what we have seen in the US over the last 150 years (at least) is not that much different from what is now forecast for the next few decades.  Automation will reduce the number of workers needed to produce some given amount, and productivity per worker will rise.  And while this will be disruptive and lead to a good deal of job displacement (important issues that certainly need to be addressed), the pace of this in the coming decades is not anticipated to be much different from what the country has seen over the last 150 years.

A universal basic income is fundamentally a program of redistribution, and given the high and growing degree of inequality in the US, a program of redistribution might well be warranted.  I will discuss this is a separate blog post.  But such a program is not needed to provide income to workers who will be losing jobs to automation, as there will be jobs if we follow the right macro policies.  And $12,000 a year would not nearly compensate for a lost job anyway.

Elizabeth Warren’s response to the jobs question was different.  She argued that jobs have been lost not due to automation, but due to poor international trade policies.  She said:  “the data show that we have had a lot of problems with losing jobs, but the principal reason has been bad trade policy.”

Actually, this is simply not true, and the data do not support it.  There have been careful studies of the issue, but it is easy enough to see in the numbers.  For example, in an earlier post on this blog from 2016, I examined what the impact would have been on the motor vehicle sector if the US had moved to zero net imports in the sector (i.e. limiting car imports to what the US exports, which is not very much).  Employment in the sector would then have been flat, rather than decline by 17%, between the years 1967 and 2014.  But this impact would have been dwarfed by the impact of productivity gains.  The output of the motor vehicle (in real terms) was 4.5 times higher in 2014 than what it was in 1967.  If productivity had not grown, they would then have required 4.5 times as many workers.  But productivity did grow – by 5.4 times.  Hence the number of workers needed to produce the higher output actually went down by the 17% observed.  Banning imports would have had almost no effect relative to this.

D.  Summary and Conclusion

Automation is important, but is nothing new.  The Luddites destroyed factory machinery in the early 1800s in England due to a belief that the machines were taking away their jobs and that they would then be left with no prospects.  And data for the US that goes back to at least 1870 shows such job “destroying” processes have long been underway.  They have not accelerated now.  Indeed, over the past decade the pace has slowed (i.e. less job “destruction”).  But it is too soon to tell whether this deceleration is similar to fluctuations seen in the past, where there were occasional deviations but then always a return to the long-term path.

Looking forward, careful studies such as those carried out by McKinsey have estimated how many jobs may be exposed to automation (using technologies that we know already to be technically feasible).  While they emphasize that any such forecasts are subject to a great deal of uncertainty, McKinsey’s midpoint scenario estimates that perhaps 23% of jobs may be substituted away by automation between 2016 and 2030.  If so, such a pace (of 1.9% a year) would be similar to what productivity growth has been historically in the US.  There is nothing new here.

But while nothing new, that does not mean it should be ignored.  It will lead, just as it has in the past, to job displacement and disruption.  There is plenty of scope for government to assist workers in finding appropriate new jobs, and in obtaining training for them, but the US has historically never done this all that well.  Countries such as Germany have been far better at addressing such needs.

The candidate responses did not, however, address this (other than Andrew Yang saying government supported training programs in the US have not been effective).  While Bernie Sanders correctly noted there is no shortage of needs for which workers will be required, he has also proposed a jobs guarantee to be provided by the federal government.  Such a guarantee would be more problematic, with many questions not yet answered.  But it is also not clear why it would be needed in current circumstances anyway (with an economy at full employment).

Andrew Yang argued the opposite:  That the economy is facing a structural problem that will lead to mass unemployment due to automation, with a Fourth Industrial Revolution now underway that is unprecedented in US history.  But the figures show this not to be the case, with forecast prospects similar to what the US has faced in the past.  Thus the basis for his argument that we now need to do something fundamentally different (a universal basic income of $1,000 a month for every adult) falls away.  And I will address the $1,000 a month itself in a separate blog post.

Finally, Elizabeth Warren asserted that the problem stems primarily from poor international trade policy.  If we just had better trade policy, she said, there would be no jobs problem.  But this is also not borne out by the data.  Increased imports, even in the motor vehicle sector (which has long been viewed as one of the most exposed sectors to international trade), explains only a small fraction of why there are fewer workers needed in that sector now than was the case 50 years ago.  By far the more important reason is that workers in the sector are now far more productive.