2026 Economic Outlook: Good For Them, Not For Us

Lifting from an article that was published on CNBC.com the other day:

Trade deficit in October hits smallest since 2009 after Trump’s tariff moves

“The U.S. appears to be winning the trade war with tariffs curbing the imports of foreign goods, but America’s trading partners are not holding any grudge as they continue to buy more American goods and services,” he added. “So far the forecasts for a U.S. recession are coming up dry as productivity continues to backstop growth.”

Indeed, third-quarter productivity rose at a 4.9% clip, according to a separate report Thursday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

The rise in productivity helped push unit labor costs down 1.9% for the period, far more than expected and an indication that the labor market is not putting any upward pressure on inflation.

Long story short, employers are increasing their profits while reducing their payrolls. Great news for Wall Street – awful for American workers who are already feeling crushed by prices that only seem to go higher and higher.

“The latest figures suggest firms are successfully doing more with less labor, giving more credence to a jobless expansion,” said Matthew Martin, senior economist at Oxford Economics. “Productivity will be key to determining the economy’s speed limit and inflationary dynamics. If productivity growth continues to accelerate due to tax cuts, deregulation, and technological advancements, including AI, economic growth can pick up without causing unwanted inflation.”

There you have it: a jobless expansion.

Future profits – driven by productivity growth – will come from:

• Tax Cuts – fewer dollars going to the U.S. Treasury means more profit for corporations.
• Deregulation – companies can further boost profitability by cutting spending on worker safety, pollution controls, and other safeguards.
• Artificial Intelligence – workloads will continue to shift to data centers, replacing jobs ranging from customer service to entry-level professional roles.
• Low Inflation – inflation will be avoided by keeping payrolls flat. Less pay means fewer dollars competing for the same goods and services, resulting in lower inflation.

A Dark Future

It’s going to be a cruel few years as more and more workers find themselves pushed out of the workforce – or, alternatively, never finding their place in it after completing their education.

The theory of a jobless expansion is no longer academic. It’s being actively promoted by the people building the technologies that make it possible – and profiting from them. It should scare everyone that this is happening under Republican leadership that is actively working to sever social safety nets rather than shore them up.

For example, Elon Musk continues to use the soapbox he purchased – Twitter – to promote the idea that, thanks to AI and robotics (both of which he is investing billions upon billions of dollars in), there will come a time when humans no longer have to work.

He’s trying to sell this vision as a future utopia, but he fails to address the most important issue of all: if people don’t work, how will they sustain themselves?

Universal Basic Income would be the answer, yet those are words he has never put forward. Without UBI, the future is more accurately described not as one where humans no longer have to work, but one where humans no longer get to work.