• Basic indicators which ordinarily move in tandem now offer oddly inconsistent readings on America’s economic performance and prospects: the divergence between three trends – wealth, output, and employment.

• Wealth creation is booming in the US – between 2000 and 2016, the estimated net worth of American households and nonprofit institutions more than doubled, from $44 trillion to $90 trillion. But the wealth is not evenly distributed, and the real trends of the macro-economy tell a different story. Between 2000 and 2007, per capita GDP growth averaged less than 1.5% per year (compared to the nation’s long-term postwar 1948-2000 per capita growth rate of almost 2.3%). Between 2000 and 2016, per capita growth in America has averaged less than 1% a year.

• Had per capita growth maintained its postwar, pre-21st century rate for 2000 through 2016, per capita GDP today would be roughly 20% higher. Economists today have already begun redefining the growth potential of the US downwards.

• America has also witnessed a dreadful collapse of work. Labor force trends have been even more dismal than GDP ones. Since 2000, work rates are at their lowest level in decades. Between early 2000 and late 2016, the overall work rate for Americans 20 and older plunged by almost five percentage points (from 64.6 to 59.7). And US adult work rates have never recovered entirely from the recession of 2001 or the crash of 2008. Postwar America never experienced anything comparable. From 2009 to 2014, America’s work rates more or less flat lined. This is the only “recovery” in US history where basic labor-market indicators almost completely failed to respond.

• While the unemployment rate for December 2016 was down to 4.7 – about the same as in 1965 – it only tracks joblessness for those still in the labor force. It does not take into account workforce dropouts. Today, for every 25-55 year-old unemployed American man, another three are neither working nor looking for work.

• What is more startling is the unexpected and largely unnoticed fall-off in work rates for prime-age women. Current work rates are back to what they were in the late 1980s.