The economic statistics underscore the dichotomy of bounty and spread. The economist Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, brought our attention to the way productivity and employment have become decoupled, as shown in Figure 11.1. While these two key economic statistics tracked each other for most of the postwar period, they became decoupled in the late 1990s. Productivity continued its upward path as employment sagged.
