As the economic recovery completes its eighth year, economists expect gross domestic product growth to accelerate to about 2.3%, but jobs creation is actually slowing.

The economy added 250,000 and 226,000 jobs a month in 2014 and 2015, but only 187,000 in 2016 and 168,000 so far this year.

Either the economy is slowing down — and 2017 growth comes in below the 2.1% scored over the first eight years of the recovery — or productivity growth, so far lackluster in this decade, is picking up.

New technologies are reducing the demand for workers but government policies are not adequately facilitating the deployment of displaced workers to new and better purposes.

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As brick-and-mortar retailers scale back, Amazon AMZN, -1.78% , the web face of Wal-Mart WMT, -1.02% and others simply use less labor to accomplish comparable distribution tasks. Customers point and click without the aid of sales clerks, and packages are increasingly assembled by robots at fulfillment centers. The last mile does require a distributed delivery system but web-based retailers require less of the time from UPS UPS, -0.05% drivers than conventional retailers do from store clerks

In supermarkets and drugstores, one clerk can typically handle four or more automated checkout stations, displacing three or more cash register attendants, and those kiosks are becoming more common place. Boeing BA, -3.81% is equipping workers with Google Glass to speed complex wiring jobs and reduce the labor needed in assembly.

Automation is not new. The tractor replaced the farmer plowing 40 acres with one who could manage 400 acres, and farmers displaced went to the cities to work in factories and stores.

We have been enhancing the productivity of clerical workers with machines since the typewriter, but now computers and apps have extended this trend into the professional ranks.

Machines that can think — analyze big data to read shopper preferences to aid fashion designers and programs like Watson that reduce the time doctors need to make tough diagnoses and design treatments — make the transition of workers to new occupations more daunting.

We face two critical issues today—the economy is not growing at the pace it did during prior waves of automation. And more and more of the jobs created require complex technical skills—the kind we associated with very skilled trades in the past and sophisticated technicians nowadays—or the executive and critical thinking skills associated with a college education.

High business taxes, health-care costs, and cumbersome regulation are constraining investment, but trade agreements that permit other nations to boost exports into U.S. markets without accepting comparable amounts of American-made goods and services drag on aggregate demand too.

Overall the $500 billion dollar trade deficit—including multiplier effects—kills as many as 6 million jobs. However, even if the Trump administration were able to fix trade with China, Mexico and others, more than 6 million jobs are already unfilled in significant measure because of a disconnect between the skills needed by employers and those possessed by job seekers.

The president’s initiative to improve apprenticeship programs through public-private partnerships is critical, but it will be years before we have the kind of sophisticated training network available to employers in Germany and elsewhere in northern Europe.

More troubling, the big push during the Obama years to raise high school graduation rates has severely lowered standards — only about half of high school graduates complete a career- or college-ready curriculum. Consequently, a significant share of students lacks the background to effectively absorb technical training for either a blue- or white-collar position.

Not surprising, standardized tests administered in students’ freshman and senior years indicate that many colleges are accomplishing very little value added. Too many college graduates lack the critical-thinking skills necessary for many entry-level managerial positions, or technical preparation in fields like accounting, engineering and education.

As older workers leave the labor force, those that replace them often have lower productivity—important reasons why productivity has been growing so slowly and average wages are not rising, overall, even with unemployment at only 4.3%.

Getting the economy growing robustly again will require attacking the problem from multiple angles and levels of government. Tax cuts, regulatory reform, and better trade deals are clearly a federal responsibility but better focusing schools and colleges on needed skills falls squarely on the shoulders of the states.