Economic Report of the President 2011

The 2011 ERP was signed and released on Wednesday, and like always it provides a nice summary of economic events and analysis. Figures 1-1 and 1-2 up front were rather shocking; they reveal how little private nonresidential investment there had been during the recent boom.

A quick look at the stock estimates from the BEA revealed a similarly bleak picture about recent growth in the stock of productive capital:



Growth in the capital stock had really accelerated during the boom of the 1990s but hadn't done much during the 2000s.

Another chart I really liked was Figure 3-4, which shows average earnings by educational attainment based on CPS data since 1963. There's stagnation in each of the trajectories except for the BA or higher category.