Table of Contents

  • The Survey is published on the responsibility of the Economic and Development Review Committee, which is charged with the examination of the economic situation of member countries. The economic situation and policies of the United States were reviewed by the Committee on 18 May 2018. The draft was revised in the light of the discussion and given final approval as the agreed report of the whole Committee on 31 May 2018. This Survey was prepared in the Economics Department by Douglas Sutherland under the supervision of Patrick Lenain. Damien Azzopardi provided the statistical research assistance and Stephanie Henry provided editorial support. The Survey also benefited from contributions by Julien Daubanes, Ola Eltoukhi, Octavio Escobar, Fozan Fareed, Aimi Abdul Ghani, Stephanie Guichard, Nirosha Varghese and Pierre-Yves Yanni.The previous Survey of the United States was issued in June 2016.Information on other Surveys and how surveys are prepared is available at www.oecd.org/surveys.

  • The economy is growing steadily, unemployment is low and material wellbeing is highSustaining growth needs productivity and bringing people back into employmentThe legacy of the great recession, as well as globalisation and automation shocks, remains visible across the country

  • The current expansion is now one of the longest on record and amongst the strongest recoveries in the OECD. Only the expansions during the 1960s and 1990s are of comparable length since records began in 1854. The expansion has been job rich and has helped bring people back into the labour market, but the rate of output growth has been modest (Figure 1). While well-being has benefited from job growth, the legacy of the great recession and past structural shocks - such as globalisation and automation - remains painfully visible across the country, notably in the industrial heartland. Joblessness, non-participation and poverty are concentrated in distressed cities, notwithstanding robust job growth in coastal areas and well-connected metropolitan areas (Weingarden, 2017[1]; Austin, Glaeser and Summers, 2018[2]). This has been exacerbated by fewer opportunities to thrive irrespective of one’s origin, which is central to the American social model. The dislocation of opportunities is also associated with the opioid epidemic, which tends to be most pronounced in areas suffering from employment loss. In addition, not all families have enjoyed the benefits of economic growth and workers are worried about the impact of automation on their lives (Smith and Anderson, 2017[3]).

  • This Annex reviews actions taken on recommendations from previous Economic Surveys that are not covered in tables within the main body of the Key Policy Insights. Recommendations that are new to this Survey are listed at the end of the Executive Summary and the relevant chapter.

  • The US labour market has been exposed to repeated disruptions in the past two decades, and a wave of change stemming from the rise of automation is looming large. Although unemployment is at an historical low, many displaced workers remain inactive and wages have been stagnant for occupation affected by these disruptions. The upcoming automation of tasks with robots, artificial intelligence and machine learning will bring many benefits, but it will also lead to employment losses and wage pressures for workers whose tasks will be automated. While the US labour market had traditionally the capacity to absorb these shocks, labour market fluidity has slowed in the past two decades, hindering the reallocation of labour and contributing to high unemployment and weak participation, with some locations particularly affected by these social troubles. Lessons from these past trends are helpful to formulate future policies helping improving opportunities for displaced workers.