America is experiencing a productivity miracle

Illustration: Rose Wong

May 11th 2026|Washington, DC|4 min read

As with many a miracle, onlookers disbelieved their eyes at first. For a decade after the global financial crisis of 2007-09 rich-world productivity growth was, by historical standards, deadish. Since prosperity depends on the ability to produce more with the same labour, this consigned even America to eternal stagnation (and don’t ask about Europe). The Congressional Budget Office, a fiscal watchdog which consistently overestimated productivity growth in the 2010s, has been consistently glum this decade (see charts 1 and 2). Partial data hinting otherwise were dismissed as false prophets.