- AI had “basically zero” impact on the US economy in 2025, top economist claims
- No “tightening in the labor market” might be good for job certainty
- Global AI infrastructure spend will rise to $758 billion by 2029, says IDC
Despite AI spend being initially set to bolster US economic growth in 2025 (by as much as 92%, depending on the source and figures, per Washington Post), banking experts argue that AI’s direct contribution to growth might actually have been negligible.
Jan Hatzius, Chief Economist for Goldman Sachs, has argued AI investment has had “basically zero” effect on US GDP growth.
Speaking with Atlantic Council, Hatzius explained some of the flaws in current reporting, including that the US GDP only counts domestic production by subtracting imports.
How has AI actually affected the US economy?
It’s also worth noting that AI data centers rely heavily on imported components, with roughly 75% of the cost of a data center coming from imported parts.
Because much of this hardware is manufactured in Asia, large AI spend may not actually be benefiting the US economy as much as initially perceived, by instead bolstering the economies of other nations.
“We don’t actually view AI investments as strongly growth positive,” Hatzius said, concluding that “most AI equipment is imported.” That being said, he still acknowledges that AI’s impact still leans slightly positive – just far less than misrepresentations have previously indicated.
Still, post-pandemic productivity boosts have correlated with the rise in AI deployment (though Hatzius doesn’t go into the specifics of AI’s impact on worker productivity), and further gains are also on the cards. With this in mind, experts predict no “tightening in the labor market,” which could be good news for job security, but continued wage deceleration might not be such good news for workers’ pockets.
On the whole, there is no consensus on how much AI contributed to US economic growth in 2025, but broadly it’s clear that continued spend will continue to accelerate the market more generally and, even if the US doesn’t benefit drastically, other nations certainly will.
IDC research backs this up, predicting that AI infrastructure spend could hit $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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