Issue 11, Spring 1996

William A. McEachern, Editor

GDP Odds and Ends

• In current dollars, GDP was revised upward by 3.7% in 1992, which was the greatest upward revision of any year between 1959 and 1995. Real growth in 1992 was also revised up from 2.3% to 2.7%. These upward revisions remind me of the hammering that President Bush took from then-candidate Clinton, who claimed that the economy of 1992 was the worst since the Great Depression.

• The Department of Labor just released labor productivity growth rates based on the revised measures of real GDP. Since the summer of 1990, output per labor hour grew by an average of only 1.2% per year. The previously reported estimate was a much stronger 2.1% per year during the same period. Productivity from 1979 to the summer of 1990 grew by an average of 1.0% per year using the revised system, up slightly from the 0.8% based on the old methodology.

• The breakout of service exports and imports shows that in 1994 the United States exported $7,140 million in education services and imported only $791 million in such services.

• Personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income shows a steady dropoff from 5.9% in 1992, to 4.5% in 1993, to 3.8% in 1994.

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