Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said 3 per cent US economic growth would be an admirable but difficult feat to achieve over the next few years, casting doubt on the Trump administration’s ability to reach that goal with deregulation, infrastructure spending and tax reform.
“It’s something that would be wonderful if you can accomplish it. I’d love to see it,” she said in response to a question from Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee who asked whether the target is reachable over the next five years. “It would be quite challenging.”
Yellen explained that economic growth is the sum of productivity gains and increases in the labour force. Productivity growth is “very hard to move,” and a government policy that boosted it just a few tenths of a per cent would be a “very good payoff,” she said.
Given the slow expansion of the labour force, productivity gains would have to exceed 2 per cent, according to Yellen. It’s averaged about 0.5 per cent over the past five years versus 1.1 per cent in the past decade, she said.
