AI boosts individual worker speed but economy-wide productivity lags — parallels to pre-Internet era suggest a hidden boom may be underway

Two curious things are happening to the economy in 2026. On one hand, economic expansion is still going strong despite job growth slowing to a trickle, suggesting productivity among those currently employed is rising. But by many measures, productivity growth has barely budged in recent years.

Technologists claim AI will help optimize workflows and supercharge the U.S. economy's productivity—a measure of how efficiently resources such as labor are being converted to goods and services.

The U.S. might be in the early days of a productivity boom without even knowing it.