4% Growth?! – Trump channels Bush's 2015 pipe dream

mike smitka

Just a quick cross-reference to a February 2015 post on this topic, "Promises versus Deliverables: Jeb Bush and 4% Growth". The argument that 4% growth is unrealistic is even stronger than it was 18 months ago, as labor market slack is less. We do not have 25 million Americans just waiting for a job to be created. Here is the latest update with data through the September 2016 employment data release of my periodic projection of actual vs "normal" employment levels, where the latter is adjusted to reflect the slowdown in population growth including the retirement of the "boomers."