Here is Joey Politano's latest update of real GDP growth among the G7 group of rich countries:
The US is on top, followed by Canada and Italy. Germany and Japan bring up the rear. But the best measure of economic growth is real GDP per capita. Let's take a look at that:
The US is still in the lead, but now followed by Italy and Japan. Germany still looks grim, but Canada has done the worst of all. This is because Italy and Japan have kept GDP up or flat even though their populations have fallen. Canada drops to last place because their GDP growth has been powered solely by a rising population.
The United States is the only rich country that's had strong population growth and strong economic growth.
Rather than Canada's GDP growth having been powered by a rising population, I would suggest that it would be more accurate to say that Canada's rising population has hampered its per capita GDP growth. There's no reason to believe that GDP growth would have been slower if the population had not been growing so rapidly (much more rapidly than the US's population).
Well, that's just another way of saying Canada doesn't utilize immigration very well. It's puzzling, really. I don't get it, but if I had to guess, it's related to failure to build enough housing. If nothing else, a country at least needs more housing units to accommodate population growth. Canada has maybe the rich world's worst housing affordability issues (vying with Australia), and, not surprisingly, one of the rich world's fastest rates of population growth. So, what I believe may be happening is that the financial distortions created by their affordability crisis are simply swamping the normal benefits we'd expect from immigration.
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadas-housing-affordability-crisis-may-persist-years-despite-rate-cuts-2024-09-30/
It may also be that their immigration inflows are simply too large for optimized economic growth. I have always been and continue to be a fan of immigration (I wish the United States permitted much more of it, frankly). But I'm not a hopeless ideologue on the issue, and I've never claimed that the upside to more immigration is perfectly linear, or that diminishing returns cannot ever set in (at least over the shorter term). Maybe part of their issue is, that, the labor force has expanded so rapidly that employers have had little incentive to increase productivity. Who knows?
The housing problem is literally everywhere that's remotely desirable to live and/or visit. Short term rentals have eaten up all the slack in the housing markets and everyplace is up against wall of existing residents not wanting increased density and traffic.
I don't know Canada history as much, but here in America the real estate industry started convincing everyone back in the 1930s that single family detached was the single indicator for the middle class. And worse, that neighborhoods segregated by skin color, ethnicity, and religion were the natural order. America suffers today from this brainwashing that's become a literal religion and vast amounts of land get wasted near job centers meeting the ideal of single family detached -- with a disdain for multifamily in any form.
Mostly it's because the reported numbers are completely wrong. And large scale immigration does result in a delayed gdp growth.
Your argument is that Canada has absorbed 2 million immigrants without increasing supply or demand?
My argument is that Canada has absorbed so many immigrants that it has hampered growth of productivity. Obviously, both supply and demand have increased, since GDP has managed to keep up with population growth. In the absence of population growth, perhaps GDP growth would have been a bit slower, but all the growth would have gone to increasing per capita GDP rather than just gross GDP.
The Canadian numbers are complete crap,. To go from a GDP growth of 7.7% to a per capita gdp growth of -2 % would require a population growth of 10%. In reality, Canada's population only grew 4%. I believe the correct numbers has canada gdp per capita growing at positive 3.7%.
Huh? Publicly available information reveals Canada's population was around 36 million in 2019 and has now surpassed 41 million. That's an expansion well over 10%. If anything, Canadian officials would have an incentive to underplay the country's population growth because immigration has become a hot button issue there. So if there's any massaging of numbers going on, the reality is Canada's population is probably a bit larger than the current estimate.
Anyway, it's simple math: in recent years Canada has greenlit a net rate of immigration perhaps three to four times that of the United States. What would be far more surprising than strong population growth in Canada (in light of its robust immigration inflows) would be lack thereof, unless they've somehow found a way to hide hundreds of thousands of Canadians!
"The United States is the only rich country that's had strong population growth and strong economic growth."
Don't worry. Trump will fix that.
Not to worry! Donald Trump will soon end this long national nightmare of being the best.
It's the Trump economy! I mean the economy did so well because the markets and job providers all knew that Trump would be reelected. It's just logic.
I wouldn’t call strong population growth a good thing.
Agreed. The optimum rate of population growth is zero or slightly less.
I would call national (though not global) population growth a good thing for the USA because I want retirement benefits to continue and geopolitical influence to not badly erode.
That's a non sequitur.
Not at all. If we could somehow (1) hold world population steady and (2) increase US population, that would be good. I'm aware we cannot do so, but it's not a sequitur to value population growth nationally but not globally.
As it happens, the global rate of population growth is crashing, and rich countries are in general no exception. The main thing we'll accomplish if we greenlight more immigration to the US is to enable the country's share of world population to fall a bit more slowly than would otherwise be the case. But it will fall either way.
Immigration is a long term problem around the world. Telling everyone to stay in their assigned boxes isn't exactly working and short of major coups and nation building to make the "sh*thole countries* better places to live, we're stuck with people wanting to move where there are more opportunities.
I guess Mexico is not G7 but it would be worthwhile to show for us to see how Mexico compares in these statistics. Questions of proximity and all. I expect they're dismal by comparison and feel appropriately humiliated that I don't just know. But, like I said, Mexico should be, in fairness, included. (pardon if greedy for more than is offered so freely--I'll look it up)
I guess Mexico came in the same range in terms of post-pandemic growth--a little less than Great Britain. So, useful data point. Still, you really gotta look at that chart to get what it's after.