WSJ: Jobless Prosperity Has Arrived, Economic Growth Decoupled from Employment, Baby Boomers Continue to Retire Amid Reduced Immigration
The Wall Street Journal reports that "jobless prosperity" has arrived, with economic growth decoupled from employment.
Corporate demand is strong, with profits and revenue performing well, but hiring has stalled, with July non-farm payrolls showing shrinkage, and five months of contraction in the past 12 months.
Private sector job growth has averaged just over 50,000 per month in the past year, a trend almost unprecedented in non-recession periods.
The unemployment rate remains above 4%, primarily due to a shrinking labor supply: the continued retirement of baby boomers combined with reduced immigration.
In an optimistic AI scenario, economic growth could double to an average of 4.3% over the next five years, while employment may decline by about 8%.
Market mechanisms show that productivity improvements and demographic factors jointly suppress employment demand, with more capital flowing to high-profit companies rather than labor-intensive expansion; beneficiaries are capital owners and AI-related firms, while job seekers and the consumer sector reliant on job growth are under pressure.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
The U.S. economy previously experienced a "jobless recovery," and this "jobless prosperity" is occurring in a non-recession context, primarily driven by productivity gains from AI combined with a shrinking labor supply, continuing the historical trend of technological advancement replacing certain jobs.
On the capital side, companies prioritize profit enhancement over hiring in the face of strong demand, with funds directed more towards automation and buybacks; the motivation is to cope with high labor costs and the efficiency dividends of AI, strategically anchoring growth in capital and technology rather than human expansion.
Similar cases can be seen in the decoupling of manufacturing employment and output in the 2000s, as well as the acceleration of automation in certain industries post-pandemic; the current labor market is in a structural transformation phase characterized by a shrinking supply and moderate demand.
The structural judgment pertains to technological substitution: AI and automation reduce the labor required for unit output, with the mechanism being that when productivity surges faster than demand expansion, employment growth diverges from economic expansion, creating a new normal of "growth without jobs."
ABAB News · Law of Cognition
- Prosperity can exist without jobs
- The higher the productivity, the scarcer the jobs
- The contraction of labor supply masks weak demand