Book: Building a More Resilient US Economy
The Aspen Economic Strategy Group’s sixth annual policy volume, Building a More Resilient US Economy, considers some of the most pressing economic challenges facing the United States. The book’s publication comes as the US faces historically high levels of debt that threaten the resiliency of the nation’s economy, including the ability to invest in key ...
March 2024 Jobs Report: Three Things to Know
The BLS estimated that the US economy added 275,000 jobs in February, with the unemployment rate ticking up from 3.7% to 3.9%. Three things stood beneath the headlines of this report. Revisions Take Some Heat of the Economy While the top-line number today beat the consensus market forecasts, the BLS also revised down their ...
Eight Questions—and Some Answers—on the US Fiscal Situation
In this paper, Jason Furman addresses eight specific questions essential to understanding the US fiscal situation and what policymakers can do to address the federal debt. He finds that an adjustment of between 0.7 and 4.6 percent of GDP is necessary to stabilize the debt over the next decade, and he proposes a broad set ...
Strengthening America’s Economic Dynamism
The Aspen Economic Strategy Group’s seventh annual policy volume focuses on the theme, Strengthening America’s Economic Dynamism. The volume’s publication comes at a time when US policymakers are turning away from free-market principles in favor of protectionist policies and more active government-directed industrial policy. These shifts, combined with growing economic and political difficulties including the ...
Top 12 Charts of 2024 from the AESG
As a group devoted to advancing evidence-based economic policy, the AESG appreciates the powerful role that charts play in telling the story of our economy. Enjoy twelve figures that showcase our work in 2024! Figure 1: Manufacturing’s share of employment in the US has fallen consistently since the end of the Second World War. In ...
2024 Job Market Recap: Slow but Steady Labor Market Growth
The past year has been one marked by several significant swings in the labor market. It featured strong (possibly, immigration-fueled) growth in the labor market at the start, a sharp rise in the unemployment rate that fueled speculation of an incoming recession over the summer, and Hurricane-affected data to round out the fall. After all ...
Book Launch Recap: Strengthening America’s Economic Dynamism
This week the AESG published our seventh annual policy volume, Strengthening America’s Economic Dynamism. This year’s volume features six papers covering topics including US trade and industrial policy, America’s fiscal and state capacity, the impact of advances in artificial intelligence on the labor market, and evidence-based strategies to make communities safer. These papers also provided ...
In Brief: The Recent Rise in US Labor Productivity
BRIEFLY US labor productivity has enjoyed a period of renewed growth over the past year, interrupting a nearly twenty-year decline: the 2.7 percent productivity growth in 2023 outpaces the 1.5 percent annual average since 2004, and it nearly matches the 2.9 percent pace seen during the country’s last productivity surge in the 1990s. While the ...
In Brief: Building Security in the Semiconductor Supply Chain
BRIEFLY Semiconductors are the building blocks of almost every modern technology, from dishwashers to smartphones to javelin missiles. Shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with rising geopolitical tensions in the region where most chips are produced, have highlighted the fragile supply chains of this critical technology. In response, US policymakers have invested billions in the ...