

The AI productivity boom is not here (yet)
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Artificial intelligence is advancing at startling speed. The latest models can now complete complex, time-eating tasks with little human supervision. This month one of OpenAI’s models helped derive a new result in theoretical physics.
No wonder an essay declaring that “Something Big is Happening” and, in recent days, a blog post of a similar tenor, have gone viral.Is something big happening to the economy, too? Scott Bessent, America’s treasury secretary, predicted last year that AI would soon start “biting”—by which he meant lead to noticeable improvements in productivity. Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Reserve, is counting on an AI-driven productivity boom to help tame inflation.A puzzle in America’s macroeconomic data appears, at first glance, to suggest that Messrs Bessent and Warsh are right. The economy grew by a brisk 2.2% in 2025, according to data released on February 20th.
Yet hiring slowed sharply over the same period. Employers added only about 15,000 jobs a month on average—equivalent to annual employment growth of just 0.1%. This combination suggests that each worker is generating more output.The evidence of substantial, AI-fuelled productivity gains, however, is thin.
Real GDP grew at an annualised rate of just 1.4% in the fourth quarter of 2025 (though a government shutdown was partly to blame). And the recent gap between growth in output and employment is not especially unusual. Since 1950 it has been at least two percentage points in nearly one-third of years.
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