Dr. Michael Mandel, PPI’s chief economic strategist, is quoted in David Rotman’s piece about the advances in technology and economic slowdown.
Michael Mandel, an economist at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., says the productivity slowdown is occurring in what he calls the physical industries, including manufacturing and health care. Such industries, which he estimates make up 80 percent of the national economy, account for only 35 percent of investments in information technology and their productivity reflects that, growing at only 0.9 percent annually. Meanwhile, productivity is growing by 2.8 percent a year in what Mandel calls digital industries, which include finance and business services.
If that is what is going on, it leaves plenty of room for optimism. “As we learn to apply the new technologies,” says Mandel, “we could see growth in productivity speed up again.”
Read the rest of the article at the MIT Technology Review.
