- AI had ‘basically zero’ impact on US economy in 2025, top economist says
- No “labor market adjustment” could be good for job security
- Global spending on AI infrastructure will rise to $758 billion by 2029, says IDC
Even though AI spending was initially projected to boost US economic growth in 2025 (up to 92%, depending on source and figures, per Washington Post), banking experts argue that AI’s direct contribution to growth may actually have been negligible.
Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, has argued that investment in AI has had a “basically zero” effect on US GDP growth.
talking to Atlantic CouncilHatzius explained some of the flaws in current reporting, including the fact that U.S. GDP only counts domestic production by subtracting imports.
How has AI really affected the US economy?
It’s also worth noting that AI data centers rely heavily on imported components, with approximately 75% of the cost of a data center coming from imported parts.
Because much of this hardware is manufactured in Asia, the big spending on AI may not actually be benefiting the U.S. economy as much as initially perceived, but rather boosting the economies of other nations.
“We actually don’t see investments in AI as being very positive for growth,” Hatzius said, concluding that “most AI equipment is imported.” That said, he still acknowledges that the impact of AI is still slightly positive, but much less than misrepresentations have previously indicated.
Still, post-pandemic productivity increases have been correlated with increased AI implementation (although Hatzius doesn’t go into the details of AI’s impact on worker productivity), and greater gains are also on the horizon. With this in mind, experts predict there will be “no tightening in the labor market,” which could be good news for job security, but a continued wage slowdown might not be so good news for workers’ pockets.
Overall, there is no consensus on how much AI contributed to US economic growth in 2025, but overall it is clear that continued spending will continue to accelerate the market more broadly, and even if the US does not benefit dramatically, other nations certainly will.
IDC research supports this and predicts that AI infrastructure spending could reach $758 billion by 2029 (the equivalent of $189.5 billion quarterly), up from $82 billion in the last full calendar quarter.
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