What economic growth rate is required to halve U.S. unemployment?
Two points. I believe the Bureau of Labor Statistics has published some numbers in this area... I cannot find them at the moment though. I think you need to take these numbers with a grain of salt, though, because they cannot account for productivity and automation improvements that are being aggressively implemented. Companies aren't just bloodletting -- they are refactoring business processes and automating thousands of jobs away. I'm reminded of Say's Law (developed by Jean-Baptiste Say) which can best be reduced to: The market clears (i.e. there is always some price at which an item will sell in a market).  Full employment can always be obtained in any free market economy.  People may not be pleased, however, with their wage rate. There are, however, many deterrents to employment (at least in the US): These are just some I can think of off the top of my head.  I'm sure there are many others.
Schiff is a goon. Most growth has come from the private sector over the last two years and GDP growth has actually been reduced due to cutbacks at the state &amp; local government levels.   So, Schiff, who is always and forever claiming the sky is falling, failed to realize the largest burden on GDP growth in recent times has been the public sector. Manufacturing *employment*. Manufacturing *output* has increased.  The people who used to be employed in manufacturing are slowly being shuffled to places where they can be more productive rather than taking up space in jobs where they have become extraneous due to productivity gains. This means a lot of retraining is necessary but there's really little alternative.  This has nothing whatsoever with the growth potential of the economy, so I'm not sure why you brought it up. "This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://reason.com/archives/2017/07/11/the-myth-of-technological-unem) reduced by 90%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Isn&amp;#039;t technological unemployment a real and serious problem? Non-economists of a quantitative bent fret about what we&amp;#039;re going to do when all the jobs go away-when, say, autonomous vehicles replace America&amp;#039;s 3.5 million truck drivers.  &gt; The gross figure of 1 percent of jobs lost per month is the relevant one for worries about technological unemployment.  &gt; One in which all jobs are protected, bureaucrats decide who gets subsidies and who doesn&amp;#039;t, and the economy slides, as France has, into stagnation and high levels of youth unemployment? Or one in which labor laws are flexible, individual workers decide their own futures, and the economy lifts up the poorest among us?   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6mupwx/the_myth_of_technological_unemployment/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~165476 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **job**^#1 **worked**^#2 **know**^#3 **percent**^#4 **unemployment**^#5" I am - The economy is influenced by the debt and government manipulation in the short term, which is going to drive employment (or lack thereof).  In the slightly longer term, a financial collapse followed by an economic collapse and depression are going to mean very high unemployment for a very long time.    What we've got now is only bad compared to what we've been used to for the last few decades.  In a depression where government aid is unavailable because the government is the cause of it, things will be considerably worse. "Who's economy? Just because unemployment is high doesn't mean there aren't quite a few people prospering. If you want to work in a factory, chances are you're not feeling too good about the next 10 years, because you know your job is going somewhere where someone is willing to work for $2 per day. If you work in health care, or IT, or engineering, or any number of other highly skilled fields, then chances are your outlook is nowhere near as bleak. Most companies are making tons of money, the stock market is doing well, sales number in retail last weekend were great, etc. When it comes to jobs and the economy there really are two Americas right now. The real problem is the number of people have joined the ""screwed-up-the-ass"" half and have no way of making it out." Whatever the supply of labor and demand for labor set.   If tomorrow suddenly the American economy took off, unemployment dropped to almost 0, Walmart would have to start raising wages in order to fill cashier slots. Does this mean that suddenly Walmart employees are giving more to Walmart? No, of course not, it just means the supply and demand of labor had radically changed. The thing is that employment is a part of a loop, not an end in and of itself.  You work to make money.  You make money to spend it.  Other people work to give you what you spend money on so they can get that money etc.  If your problem is that there isn't enough production to meet demand then employment will rise and people will meet that demand.  On the other hand if something external disrupts the cycle and you get mass unemployment for some reason that will depress demand since all those people don't have money to spend anymore.  Thus there is lower demand for services since there is less money to pay for those services.  This is the downward spiral of a Depression.  My worry is that if we keep supplanting all the manual labor jobs (eventually including most retail in this) then who's going to be buying those services? Increasing demand, the price people are willing to pay, will also increase profits, leading to the virtuous cycle you describe. The government spending tax dollars, also leads to growth.  The 2 sides balance out.  The difference between CEO pay and employee pay is that employees spend their money, while CEOs save money. So by taxing profits, money is put back into the economy. Agreed.  The number of capable people who are either unemployed and/or willing to work for less in the world is a few multiples of the entire USA population.    The USA really doesn't need more workers because they cannot compete with the rest of the world.  Unfettered world wide trade might be good for the world, but it is not so good for the bottom 50%-30% of the USA.    Something about concentrated costs and diffuse benefits. You're only thinking very short term. Less people means less construction is needed since there's less demand. Less demand for goods means less goods are sold. So smaller profits in the longer term.  Why do you think there are more jobs and opportunity in New York than a place like Kansas? Yeah exactly. The problem is that metrics like unemployment rate are just really poor metrics the way they're measured. And to make matters worse we double down and use those same poor metrics to create derivative measurements like the Phillips curve. The result is models that model nothing, but still manage to be the basis of policy decisions. The solution is spending restraint during the growth periods and prudent application of counter-cyclical fiscal policy, especially during the slow periods. The USA embarked on a strange experiment lead be Greenspan of excessively low interest rates for a prolonged period of time. Periods of strong economic growth should feature high interest rates, periods of reduced economic growth can then be countered somewhat through monetary policy. The government should also endeavour to run surplus budgets during the good times and not be afraid of turning those into deficit budgets in the downturns. If you run a deficit budget during a period of strong economic growth, together with low cash rates you have nowhere to move when the cycle reverses.  The solution now? That is difficult. I would say that the solution now would be to raise revenues through corporate taxes and similarly increase government spending on investments aimed at stimulating the economy. Use this time to invest in the much needed infrastructure maintenance and upgrades that the USA needs. These need to be fast-tracked into action and I would therefore consider fixing infrastructure as more important than installing new infrastructure.   There are probably long-term structural adjustments that need to be looked at too, but I am not intimately familiar with the USA as I am Australian. It is clear however that Austerity during economic downturns does not help end the recession (or benign growth). It is clear to me as an observer however that employment appears to be the big issue in the USA right now, so cutting jobs is not a smart move.  Edit: I'll point out that my opinion comes from the Australian experience, our government ran surplus budgets during our period of recent growth and our reserve bank kept interest rates high. When the GFC hit us in 2008 the government almost instantly reversed its fiscal policy, going so far as mailing $900 cheques to every Australian just to get cash flowing in the economy, they then embarked upon infrastructure spending programs. Similarly the reserve bank were able to quickly and dramatically reduce interest rates. The result was that we saw 1 quarter of mildly negative growth, and positive growth ever since (hence no recession). We ran a textbook example of counter-cyclical fiscal and monetary policy which is today lauded by economists over. We now have 5% unemployment, low government debt (relative to the OECD) and high economic growth (relative to the OECD). "But you are oversimplifying economics.  1) Not everyone can be a geneticist, but most people are capable of being manufacturers, carpenters, electricians, etc. with the proper technical training. America is failing on this in two fronts: (a) we are not making it worth it for companies to keep manufacturing here in the States and (b) we are not giving our workforce the technical skills necessary. So many manufacturers are asking the question ""who is going to take over our retiring workforce of skilled blue collar jobs?"".   2) Even if we can get 40% of our work force into skilled blue collar, white collar, or professional jobs that means the other 60% are easily employable in what's called the non-basic sector, basically jobs like retail, services, residential real estate, etc, etc. The more we focus on how America can generate many higher tech jobs to compete globally (green technology anyone?) the higher the standard of living, the more luxuries we can afford that generate more jobs.  Nobody has to be dead weight except: (a) people who choose not to work, in which case they have no business receiving anything but basic food and shelter from society, (b) people who have disabilities, for which we should have programs in place.   We had full employment for many years even as our population grew. The only reason unemployment is so bad today is because America is losing many jobs to technology and globalization and not finding ways to compete and our work force can't handle many of the new jobs anyways." The long-run goal is to eliminate poverty through wealth creation. If that makes for some weird new social interactions, I'd say that's a reasonable cost.  I mention comparing to earlier periods simply as a measure of progress to determine whether or not there is a problem that needs correction, such as a specific group in society experiencing real wage stagnation, or truly anemic growth rates relative to earlier periods. It's the slope of the trend line for each group that I'd be worried about, where linear or exponential is good, and logarithmic should indicate a potential crisis.  Ultimately, I believe that it's not a persons absolute circumstances that matter, but the rate at which those circumstances are improving throughout their lives that most strongly affects their subjective well-being (but that's just my theory).  As for real estate costs, you're absolutely correct that this is a problem, but it's as easily explainable problem. Supply is artificially constrained in most of the US due to the need for explicit government permission (in the form of building permits and zoning laws) in order to build new units. Basic economics says that when supply is artificially restricted, prices will rise.  In areas where government is restrictive, such as San Francisco, prices rise sharply. In places where government is more permissive, like Houston, prices remain much more reasonable. "Do you expect governments to completely cut spending? Are you a utopian libertarian? I'm struggling to see how I'm ""crossing factoids.""  I was making the point that the private sector has been growing at a faster pace than GDP as a whole over the past two years due to the public sector's shrinking. So, that proves Schiff's ""theory"" incorrect."