Computers: Waiting for the Revolution

Abstract

the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported data in January suggesting that the economy again grew rapidly in the last three months of 1997, the financial community was tantalized by the possibility that America's rate of growth had at last reached a higher plateau for a significant period of time. The fourth quarter did produce an annualized growth rate of nearly 4 percent. This followed eighteen months in which the real gross domestic product (GDP), discounted for inflation, had already grown by an annual rate of 4 percent and unemployment had fallen to a quarter-century low of 4.7 percent. The output of goods or services per hour of work (known as productivity) had risen by 2.25 percent in the preceding twelve months, and nearly 2 percent a year since 1996, well above its historically slow annual growth trend of 1 percent since the early 1970s (although, after revisions, it will probably have slowed significantly in the fourth calendar quarter of 1997). All the while, consumer inflation had fallen to less than 2 percent, and Wash-