John Fernald is a senior research advisor in the economic research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and, beginning in September 2017, an economics professor at INSEAD Business School. He previously worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and as an economist for the Federal Reserve Board. He was a senior economist for international finance on the White House Council of Economic Advisors staff in the late 1990s and has taught macroeconomics at University of Michigan, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and INSEAD. Fernald regularly speaks on economics — especially on trends in productivity growth — and has been regularly cited in the business press.
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Since 2009, the US unemployment rate has fallen from 10 percent to 4¼ percent, underpinned by steady job gains. Yet despite this employment strength, growth in output and wage...