Latest / Trumponomics / Episode 27: Can Slow Growth and the American Dream Coexist?
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: We can make a very good prediction as to how
- 0:02Speaker 1: many sixty nine year olds will be alive in the
- 0:04Speaker 1: United States next year. You just look at this year
- 0:06Speaker 1: sixty eight year olds and do a mortality adjustment. Next
- 0:10Speaker 1: year's productivity growth is anyone's gas. Hi, and welcome back
- 0:17Speaker 1: to Bloomberg Benchmark, a podcast about the global economy. It
- 0:20Speaker 1: is Thursday, March three. I'm Tori Stillwell and economics reporter
- 0:24Speaker 1: with Bloomberg News in DC, and I am joined by
- 0:27Speaker 1: my co host, dam Moss, our executive editor for International
- 0:30Speaker 1: Economics in New York, Hadian morning. This week, we are
- 0:33Speaker 1: talking about a topic that's pretty near and dear to
- 0:36Speaker 1: our hearts as economics reporters, and that is potential growth.
- 0:39Speaker 1: Potential growth is essentially the speed limit of our economy.
- 0:43Speaker 1: It's an especially great time to talk about this because
- 0:46Speaker 1: given the election, we're hearing a lot of promises from
- 0:49Speaker 1: candidates about growth. My plan can save us this many
- 0:53Speaker 1: billions of dollars, create X jobs, stimulate y growth. That's right.
- 0:58Speaker 1: Donald Trump has said that his tax cutting kaboosh GDP
- 1:02Speaker 1: growth to his highest six percent. Before Jeb Bush dropped out,
- 1:06Speaker 1: his plan promised at least four percent growth, and Bernie
- 1:10Speaker 1: Sanders campaign is touted an analysis that says his expansion
- 1:13Speaker 1: plans could boost economic growth to around five and all
- 1:16Speaker 1: this sounds leaves and bounds better than the two point
- 1:19Speaker 1: one percent anal piece that we've averaged during the six
- 1:21Speaker 1: full years of the recovery. The thing is, these these
- 1:24Speaker 1: candidates growth plans are also at odds with what we
- 1:26Speaker 1: keep hearing from economists, which is that potential growth is
- 1:29Speaker 1: really closer to two percent, and according to them, that's
- 1:31Speaker 1: about as fast as we can really grow, which would
- 1:34Speaker 1: make all these political promises pretty hard to keep. So
- 1:36Speaker 1: we wanted a gift to help us navigate this. We're
- 1:40Speaker 1: going to walk through potential growth, how it's calculated, what
- 1:44Speaker 1: it looks like, and how it compares to the past.
- 1:47Speaker 1: We also want to talk about the implications for American
- 1:50Speaker 1: society and policy making, given that much of what we've
- 1:54Speaker 1: come to associate with the US a generous safety net,
- 1:58Speaker 1: the American dream wasn't at a time when we appeared
- 2:02Speaker 1: to be growing much faster. So, without further ado, let's
- 2:05Speaker 1: introduce our guest. It seems like he's worked everywhere from
- 2:09Speaker 1: Brookings to the Center on budget and policy priorities, the
- 2:12Speaker 1: World Bank, the National Economic Council. Right now, he works
- 2:15Speaker 1: down the street from us in the Executive Office Building,
- 2:18Speaker 1: where he is chairman of President Barack Obama's Council of
- 2:21Speaker 1: Economic Advisors, and once upon a time he used to
- 2:24Speaker 1: hang out regularly with Matt Damon, his freshman roommate at Harvard.
- 2:28Speaker 1: Jason Furman, thanks so much for joining us, Thanks for
- 2:31Speaker 1: having me. But before we get into the heavy stuff,
- 2:33Speaker 1: do you get much time for movies these days? I
- 2:37Speaker 1: get some time for movies. I certainly love the Martian
- 2:39Speaker 1: wouldn't have missed it. So, Jason, what exactly is the
- 2:43Speaker 1: CEA For some of our listeners who may not know,
- 2:46Speaker 1: you know, what do you do with your day to
- 2:47Speaker 1: day life. The Council of Economic Advisors was created seventy
- 2:51Speaker 1: years ago, and it is an institution that in many
- 2:54Speaker 1: ways is unique in the world. UM I report directly
- 2:57Speaker 1: to the President. I regularly send him memos and advise
- 3:02Speaker 1: him personally on the full spectrum of economic issues, from
- 3:07Speaker 1: the more macroeconomic questions of the trajectory of the economy
- 3:10Speaker 1: that we're going to be talking about today, to you know,
- 3:13Speaker 1: more microeconomic issues like overtime regulations in labor or technology
- 3:20Speaker 1: policy or healthcare? Does that mean you see the president
- 3:24Speaker 1: every day? You send him texts? How doesn't break down?
- 3:28Speaker 1: We send him at least one memo um a day.
- 3:32Speaker 1: We have a standing daily update for him and writing.
- 3:35Speaker 1: We also give him memos interpreting economic data before it's released,
- 3:40Speaker 1: and we do that a couple of times a week,
- 3:43Speaker 1: and then see him pretty regularly as well to discuss
- 3:48Speaker 1: economic issues. And does he call you up and site Hey, Chaison,
- 3:52Speaker 1: I think your analysis of the monthly trade balance is
- 3:54Speaker 1: flawed in paragraph too. How does it work? He is
- 3:59Speaker 1: a careful reader, and when you see him, he'll bring
- 4:02Speaker 1: up something you wrote about a week ago and want
- 4:04Speaker 1: to talk to you about it, engage with it. He
- 4:06Speaker 1: certainly wouldn't be shy if he did see a mistake
- 4:09Speaker 1: in paragraph two, and if there had been one, he'd
- 4:11Speaker 1: probably catch it. But we try to be pretty careful. Well,
- 4:15Speaker 1: let's get to our topic at hand for the day,
- 4:17Speaker 1: which is potential GDP, and I think a quick definition
- 4:21Speaker 1: of it is it's essentially the pace at which the
- 4:23Speaker 1: economy can expand in the long run without generating faster
- 4:27Speaker 1: inflation and while keeping unemployment steady. So I've always heard
- 4:31Speaker 1: the rule of thumb for it is growth in labor
- 4:34Speaker 1: productivity plus growth in the labor force equals potential growth.
- 4:37Speaker 1: Is that about right? That is about right. There's one
- 4:41Speaker 1: or two technical measurement issues that intervene, but for the
- 4:44Speaker 1: most part, output per worker times workers equals output. So
- 4:49Speaker 1: if you look at the growth of output poor worker,
- 4:51Speaker 1: that's productivity growth the growth of workers. You know, add
- 4:55Speaker 1: those two growth rates together you get potential great. And
- 4:59Speaker 1: so let's talk about sort of where economists have pegged
- 5:02Speaker 1: potential growth, um where you have it pegged, And I'll
- 5:06Speaker 1: and I'll also mentioned some others because CBO, the Congressional
- 5:09Speaker 1: Budget Office puts it around two And actually I saw
- 5:13Speaker 1: a Morgan Stanley note not too long ago that put
- 5:15Speaker 1: it at one point five percent, which is compared to
- 5:17Speaker 1: the growth rates that we've been seeing recently, a good
- 5:20Speaker 1: deal lower. So where do you see it? If you
- 5:24Speaker 1: didn't undertake any public policies at all, and you continued
- 5:28Speaker 1: on the track we're going, we would expect potential growth
- 5:32Speaker 1: to be about the same two point zero percent that
- 5:35Speaker 1: the Congressional Budget Office sees it at. But public policies
- 5:39Speaker 1: can make a difference, and we estimate that incorporating a number,
- 5:43Speaker 1: but not all, of the policies the President has proposed,
- 5:46Speaker 1: would get that potential growth rate up to two point three,
- 5:51Speaker 1: both by increasing labor force growth and by increasing productivity growth.
- 5:57Speaker 1: And how does this compare with previous Dick, it's how
- 6:00Speaker 1: are we're doing right now? Relatively speaking? The big difference between,
- 6:06Speaker 1: you know, what we see going forward and what we've
- 6:09Speaker 1: seen over the last sixty years is the labor force growth,
- 6:13Speaker 1: and labor force growth over the next decade will be
- 6:17Speaker 1: considerably slower than it was over the last sixty years.
- 6:21Speaker 1: And that's for two reasons. The first is that the
- 6:26Speaker 1: baby boom is turning into a retirement boom. As people
- 6:30Speaker 1: reach sixty seventy seventy five, the baby boomers and they retire,
- 6:36Speaker 1: so that demographic wave which had propelled us forward is
- 6:39Speaker 1: now moving in reverse. The second thing is from the
- 6:44Speaker 1: end of World War Two until around the late nine nineties,
- 6:48Speaker 1: there was a big influx of women into the workforce.
- 6:52Speaker 1: What percentage of women working went from less than a
- 6:54Speaker 1: third to um considerably higher than that. That influx has
- 7:01Speaker 1: leveled off since the late and the absence of the
- 7:04Speaker 1: baby boomers and an influx of women, we would expect
- 7:07Speaker 1: to see slowing labor force going forward. I'm also kind
- 7:13Speaker 1: of curious about the productivity side of this too. We've
- 7:16Speaker 1: we've had a show on productivity, as some of our
- 7:19Speaker 1: listeners may remember, how does that play a role into
- 7:22Speaker 1: potential growth as well? Productivity is much more uncertain, and
- 7:26Speaker 1: so when you look at differences like between Morgan Stanley,
- 7:29Speaker 1: who you talked about, Um, they're at the bottom end
- 7:33Speaker 1: of potential these days. Goldman Sacks is estimating one point
- 7:37Speaker 1: seven five cbo two point zero. Most of the difference
- 7:40Speaker 1: between those numbers is differences and projections of productivity growth.
- 7:45Speaker 1: Productivity growth is really hard to predict. Where we can
- 7:48Speaker 1: make a very good prediction as to how many sixty
- 7:51Speaker 1: nine year olds will be alive in the United States
- 7:53Speaker 1: next year. You just look at this year sixty eight
- 7:55Speaker 1: year olds and do a mortality adjustment. Next year's productivity
- 7:59Speaker 1: growth is any one's guess. You're essentially trying to predict
- 8:02Speaker 1: an innovation, right, yeah, exactly, And how do you predict
- 8:05Speaker 1: a new idea that someone doesn't have today how many
- 8:08Speaker 1: of them they are going to have five years from now?
- 8:10Speaker 1: And there's no natural law of economics that says the
- 8:15Speaker 1: rate of new idea growth is has to be one
- 8:17Speaker 1: percent a year or two percent a year or three
- 8:19Speaker 1: percent a year. There's just nothing that tells you you
- 8:21Speaker 1: know what has to be. So what people do is
- 8:24Speaker 1: generally they take averages over the past. And the big
- 8:27Speaker 1: question is should you look at just the last five years,
- 8:30Speaker 1: the last ten years, the last fifty years. I personally
- 8:35Speaker 1: think the further back you go, the more accurate a
- 8:38Speaker 1: projection you get for the future, because it's very noisy,
- 8:41Speaker 1: it bounces around a lot, and you don't want to
- 8:43Speaker 1: place too much weight on any small number of years.
- 8:49Speaker 1: And how did the recession affect potential growth? I think
- 8:54Speaker 1: that recession took a real bite out of potential because
- 8:56Speaker 1: it was a period when um it resulted and less
- 9:00Speaker 1: business investment, It resulted in less research and development, and
- 9:06Speaker 1: so I think that lowers your potential growth rate. And
- 9:10Speaker 1: that's an important question. I mean, in theory and economics,
- 9:13Speaker 1: potential growth rate is supply and that tells you how
- 9:16Speaker 1: much you can grow, and then recessions are all about demand.
- 9:19Speaker 1: They tell you how much of your potential you use.
- 9:22Speaker 1: I think in reality there's a little bit more of
- 9:25Speaker 1: a causal arrows running both directions that demand effects supply
- 9:29Speaker 1: and supply effects demand. You're talking about pretty fundamental long
- 9:36Speaker 1: term forces here, Jason. Given that, why do all these
- 9:40Speaker 1: politicians say we should be doing better, we should be
- 9:44Speaker 1: doing more that some of the trains you've described transcend
- 9:49Speaker 1: anyone for your term. Um. Absolutely, look, and we should
- 9:54Speaker 1: be doing everything we can to do better. And that's
- 9:57Speaker 1: why we're trying to expand trade, invest in infrastructure, have
- 10:02Speaker 1: more research, get more people into the workforce, and reform
- 10:08Speaker 1: our business tax system. So there's a lot of things
- 10:11Speaker 1: we can do. Um. The issue is when you look
- 10:15Speaker 1: at estimates of those things, they tend to each one
- 10:19Speaker 1: of them at a couple tenths at most, and that
- 10:23Speaker 1: couple tens is spread out often over a whole decade.
- 10:26Speaker 1: So there's no magic bullet, nothing that's going to completely
- 10:30Speaker 1: change this number. But if you do a lot of
- 10:33Speaker 1: things and you do them right, you can certainly budget
- 10:36Speaker 1: up in the right direction. So then why do we
- 10:41Speaker 1: have a situation we have politicians promising us so much,
- 10:45Speaker 1: so much better growth. Um, you know, is it is
- 10:48Speaker 1: it possible that President Obama just hasn't been trying hard
- 10:51Speaker 1: enough to get growth going faster. I mean sort of
- 10:54Speaker 1: the results we're getting from the early primary states seem
- 10:58Speaker 1: to be indicating bad. Voters think that we can do better,
- 11:02Speaker 1: and they are willing to believe politicians who are promising
- 11:05Speaker 1: us growth ats in many cases double what we're seeing now. Um,
- 11:10Speaker 1: so can we can we do six percent? Can we
- 11:13Speaker 1: do five? We can? We certainly should be trying to
- 11:16Speaker 1: do as good as we possibly can, and we can
- 11:20Speaker 1: certainly do better than two point zero percent. But there
- 11:24Speaker 1: is a real limit to what many of these policies
- 11:27Speaker 1: would do. And let me give you an example. President
- 11:30Speaker 1: Bush formed tax reform Commission and they came out with
- 11:35Speaker 1: a really thoughtful, you know, well thought out plan, you
- 11:38Speaker 1: know how to pluses and minuses. Was a well thought out,
- 11:41Speaker 1: really comprehensive plan. And then President Bush's Treasury Department estimated
- 11:46Speaker 1: what it would do to the growth rate, and they
- 11:48Speaker 1: said it would add less than one tenth of one
- 11:52Speaker 1: percent to the growth rate each year. Now, might still
- 11:56Speaker 1: be worth doing. Um, I'd take anything that adds a
- 11:59Speaker 1: tenth to our growth rate it a year. But you know,
- 12:01Speaker 1: a tax plan like that added less than a tenth
- 12:04Speaker 1: of a percent. If you have a tax plan that
- 12:07Speaker 1: adds trillions of dollars to the deficit. That's not going
- 12:10Speaker 1: to add to our growth. That's going to subtract from
- 12:12Speaker 1: our growth because the cost of those deficits is going
- 12:16Speaker 1: to outweigh any benefit that you know, the tax reform
- 12:19Speaker 1: itself might have had. So the CEI, the team that
- 12:23Speaker 1: you lead, projects two point three percent potential growth over
- 12:27Speaker 1: the next ten years. Correct, Correct, And that's incorporating the
- 12:31Speaker 1: effect of most of the policies proposed by the president. Right,
- 12:35Speaker 1: how likely is it that all of those policies come
- 12:39Speaker 1: to pass? And is this the problem with making projections
- 12:43Speaker 1: over such a long period of time. Well, our job
- 12:46Speaker 1: is to say, if we did this, what would happen?
- 12:50Speaker 1: And this underlies the budget and so it fits together
- 12:53Speaker 1: as a coherent hole. Um. So it's a conditional forecast,
- 12:57Speaker 1: as opposed to trying to you know, saying, if blank happen,
- 13:00Speaker 1: then what will be the result? As supposed to unconditional.
- 13:03Speaker 1: We basically say as well, that if you didn't do
- 13:05Speaker 1: any of these policies, we didn't reform our business access,
- 13:08Speaker 1: and we didn't liberalize trade, we didn't invest in infrastructure,
- 13:12Speaker 1: we'd have a two point zero percent growth rate, and
- 13:14Speaker 1: I think that two point zero is conceptually comparable to
- 13:18Speaker 1: some of the numbers you had cited the Morgan Stanley
- 13:21Speaker 1: and the CBO, who I think of generally not assuming
- 13:24Speaker 1: that all of those policies are coming to pass. So, Jason,
- 13:28Speaker 1: it is an election year, so I feel like I
- 13:30Speaker 1: have to ask this question. You know, what would you
- 13:33Speaker 1: say to conservatives or just general skeptics out there who
- 13:37Speaker 1: may have a hard time trusting econmist working for a
- 13:40Speaker 1: Democratic president, who would argue, maybe this potential GDP number
- 13:43Speaker 1: is being loobal to make the current growth rate sound better.
- 13:48Speaker 1: You know, we do a very rigorous job at the
- 13:52Speaker 1: Council of Economic Advisors. You can look at the Economic
- 13:55Speaker 1: Report of the President which we put out last week,
- 13:59Speaker 1: and chapter or two gives a detailed accounting. We have
- 14:04Speaker 1: ten different lines, each of which we estimate separately, that
- 14:08Speaker 1: combine together for that estimate of potential. So it's something
- 14:11Speaker 1: we do very rigorously, and we also benchmark and compare
- 14:15Speaker 1: ourselves to other forecasters to make sure we're not no
- 14:18Speaker 1: way out of line. We have this idea of the
- 14:22Speaker 1: American dream, and even people like me who were born
- 14:25Speaker 1: outside the United States have heard about the American dream,
- 14:29Speaker 1: the idea that the US was leading the world in
- 14:32Speaker 1: the pace of growth, and the idea that if you
- 14:35Speaker 1: come to the United States, or even if you're born here,
- 14:38Speaker 1: you work hard, you can get along. Now, there's been
- 14:41Speaker 1: this narrative that that's all dead. How does that fit
- 14:47Speaker 1: in with what we've been talking about today. I don't
- 14:50Speaker 1: think that dream is dead at all. Um. I think
- 14:52Speaker 1: the future generations are going to have much better living
- 14:56Speaker 1: standards than we have today. Product Ativity growth is the
- 15:00Speaker 1: important thing to look at, because that's how much output
- 15:04Speaker 1: per hour is growing. The population isn't growing as quickly
- 15:09Speaker 1: in the future, you don't actually need as much economic
- 15:11Speaker 1: growth for people to be better off. It's really how
- 15:13Speaker 1: much you're getting per person. The United States is still
- 15:19Speaker 1: among the strongest growth rates of any of the advanced economies,
- 15:24Speaker 1: the fastest productivity growth of any of the major advanced economies,
- 15:30Speaker 1: and there's a lot more we can do to strengthen
- 15:34Speaker 1: that growth going forward. So I don't think any of
- 15:38Speaker 1: this is a reason for despair. But there are certain
- 15:41Speaker 1: demographic facts. The baby boomers were a tremendous force in
- 15:46Speaker 1: the economy. They're not going to be going forward, so
- 15:49Speaker 1: we're gonna need to find new forces in the economy.
- 15:51Speaker 1: That's why immigration reform, for example, could be so important economically.
- 15:58Speaker 1: I mean, is it a situation there where we as
- 16:01Speaker 1: American people need to adjust our beliefs on on what
- 16:06Speaker 1: growth looks like and what constitutes good growth in order
- 16:10Speaker 1: to better align with potential Because I think the sense
- 16:14Speaker 1: that I get from just looking at reports from the
- 16:17Speaker 1: campaign trails that people still continue to believe we can
- 16:19Speaker 1: do much faster. And perhaps it's a situation where you
- 16:22Speaker 1: have people benchmarking off with the past for the future. Um,
- 16:27Speaker 1: maybe maybe that's not the case. Maybe we don't need
- 16:28Speaker 1: to realignment. What do you think? Look, I think we
- 16:31Speaker 1: should be trying to do as well as we possibly can.
- 16:33Speaker 1: We shouldn't just accept reality and take it as given.
- 16:36Speaker 1: We should be trying to reshape it. But we also
- 16:39Speaker 1: can't be unrealistic about how you're reshaping it. So if
- 16:42Speaker 1: you think you're getting a growth rate of four or five, six,
- 16:44Speaker 1: seven percent um, you're going to end up not getting
- 16:48Speaker 1: that growth rate and having a much larger budget deficit
- 16:51Speaker 1: than you've projected. That budget deficit will then further hurt
- 16:55Speaker 1: your growth right and you'll be in a in a
- 16:57Speaker 1: negative spiral. So I think it's really important to be
- 17:01Speaker 1: honest and realistic while aspiring to strengthen the economy as
- 17:05Speaker 1: much as you possibly can, Tori. I wonder whether it's
- 17:09Speaker 1: a question of adjusting our beliefs or adjusting the context
- 17:13Speaker 1: in which we hold our beliefs. Well. To come back
- 17:16Speaker 1: to something that Jason said earlier, and I was in
- 17:19Speaker 1: Europe the week before last, Eurozone economic growth anemic that's
- 17:26Speaker 1: probably a little unfair, but not too wide of the mark.
- 17:29Speaker 1: Japan in and out of recession, China not hitting it
- 17:34Speaker 1: out of the park the way they did for much
- 17:37Speaker 1: of the past two decades. So you know, maybe this
- 17:42Speaker 1: isn't such a terrible place to be. I mean, one
- 17:45Speaker 1: thing that is worthing is that at several points since
- 17:50Speaker 1: this expansion began in two thousand and nine, people have
- 17:53Speaker 1: predicted a double dip hasn't come to pass. Jason, what
- 17:59Speaker 1: do you think I might take you one further and say, um,
- 18:02Speaker 1: America is a great place to be, and because we
- 18:07Speaker 1: really do have a lot of innovation here and that
- 18:14Speaker 1: is resulting right now in wage gains for workers are
- 18:18Speaker 1: two and a half percent a year. That's the strongest
- 18:21Speaker 1: it's been since the financial crisis. You see people at
- 18:25Speaker 1: levels of optimism that you know, reached last year that
- 18:29Speaker 1: we hadn't seen since two thousand four. And there's a
- 18:33Speaker 1: lot to be optimistic about. What about our entitlement programs
- 18:40Speaker 1: given gd potential GDP and current GDP growth UM, how
- 18:45Speaker 1: does what we're facing in terms of just how fast
- 18:47Speaker 1: economy can expand affect how we should look at those programs. Yeah,
- 18:52Speaker 1: if you're looking at the budget balance over let's say
- 18:56Speaker 1: the next twenty five years, the potential growth rate is
- 18:58Speaker 1: an important variable. The higher that potential growth rate is,
- 19:02Speaker 1: the better our budget balance um will be. And so
- 19:07Speaker 1: that's another reason why it's important to be really realistic,
- 19:09Speaker 1: so you're honestly facing what the challenges are. We have
- 19:13Speaker 1: a challenge that I would say is you know, a
- 19:16Speaker 1: moderate challenge. We've done a lot to bring down the
- 19:20Speaker 1: growth rate of health costs, we have higher tax rates
- 19:24Speaker 1: on high income households, We've brought down some other forms
- 19:26Speaker 1: of spending. So the deficit is not as big as
- 19:29Speaker 1: it looked seven years ago, but certainly, um, we have one.
- 19:34Speaker 1: And that's in part you know a function of these
- 19:36Speaker 1: potential growth rates that we've been discussing. I wonder whether
- 19:40Speaker 1: the worst thing about the nineties, Jason, was that they
- 19:43Speaker 1: actually happened. You know, the nineties was a great nineties.
- 19:47Speaker 1: I was born in the nineties were a great decade,
- 19:50Speaker 1: and part of that was things like the baby boomers
- 19:54Speaker 1: reaching their peak working years, women still entering the workforce,
- 19:59Speaker 1: so women's labor force participation rate was rising, and that
- 20:03Speaker 1: happened at the same time that there was a burst
- 20:06Speaker 1: of innovation, and all of those things came together. Some
- 20:11Speaker 1: of those things, like the baby boomers, we're not going
- 20:14Speaker 1: to get again. But you know, the innovation, there's no
- 20:17Speaker 1: reason why we can't have another wave of it in
- 20:20Speaker 1: the future. I just wonder whether it's shaped people's expectations
- 20:23Speaker 1: of what's acceptable when really what you're saying is it
- 20:26Speaker 1: was an exceptional time, not a regular time. Yeah, And
- 20:29Speaker 1: I think that's true of of all of the past decades.
- 20:32Speaker 1: I mean, you don't want to just look at the
- 20:35Speaker 1: United States at different times, or frankly, even the United
- 20:37Speaker 1: States compared to other economies. Whenever I compare our growth
- 20:40Speaker 1: rate to other countries, I like to look at it
- 20:42Speaker 1: per working age population, and so Japan has a lower
- 20:46Speaker 1: working age population growth, so they don't need as higher
- 20:50Speaker 1: growth rate UM as we have. So um Yes, you
- 20:56Speaker 1: don't want to just naively compare numbers over different periods.
- 20:58Speaker 1: You want to make sure you're a sting at the
- 21:01Speaker 1: very least for demography. Okay, well, before we wrap up,
- 21:05Speaker 1: I have to do one thing. I'm an economic indicators reporter,
- 21:08Speaker 1: so I have to know what your favorite economic indicator is.
- 21:13Speaker 1: I like, um looking, I mean, I hate to say it,
- 21:19Speaker 1: the Job's report, and the establishment number is the single
- 21:22Speaker 1: most accurate number every month that payrolls number. The payroll number.
- 21:28Speaker 1: But in the GDP report, I love looking at what
- 21:31Speaker 1: we call private domestic final purchases, which is the sum
- 21:34Speaker 1: of consumption and fixed investment, which I think is the
- 21:38Speaker 1: most inertial part of GDP and gives you the best
- 21:41Speaker 1: prediction as to what GDP is going to be going forward.
- 21:44Speaker 1: All right, that's good to know. I'll write that one down. Well,
- 21:47Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining us today, Jason. It was
- 21:50Speaker 1: great to have you. Great talking to you, and thanks
- 21:53Speaker 1: to you all for listening to Bloomberg Benchmark. We'll be
- 21:55Speaker 1: back next week and until then you can find us
- 21:57Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg Terminal and Bloomberg dot Com, as well
- 22:00Speaker 1: as on iTunes, pocket Cast, Stitcher, and Google Play. While
- 22:04Speaker 1: you're there, you can take a minute to rate and
- 22:06Speaker 1: review the show so more listeners can find us and
- 22:08Speaker 1: do let us know what you thought of the show.
- 22:10Speaker 1: Our guest Jason is on Twitter at at C chair,
- 22:15Speaker 1: and you can reach the rest of us at at
- 22:17Speaker 1: Daniel Mars d C and at Tory Stillwell. See you
- 22:20Speaker 1: next week.