Jobless Growth 2025: It's Not a Lack of Jobs, It's an Economy in Transition

📊 JOBLESS GROWTH 2025: IT’S NOT A LACK OF JOBS, IT’S AN ECONOMY IN TRANSITION

In 2025 we observed an apparent paradox:
📈 GDP growing near 5%
📉 Formal job creation historically weak

The mainstream explanation points to AI and productivity gains.
My conclusion is different (and perhaps more uncomfortable):

👉 The problem is not the absence of work, but a partially invisible economy.

In a working paper published by ISHEA Institute, I show that 45–55% of the labor gap can be explained by a digital economy that escapes traditional metrics:

Fragmented self-employment

Platform work & the creator economy

Cross-border freelancing

Digital goods and services production

Intangible consumption (Gen Z: services, experiences, subscriptions)

Jobs are not disappearing.
👉 They are redistributed, fragmented, and temporarily externalized, while 20th-century metrics try to measure a 21st-century economy.

📌 Key takeaway
We are not witnessing the end of employment, but a phase of economic transition in which new forms of work are being gradually and asymmetrically absorbed by statistical, fiscal, and institutional systems.

AI matters, yes.
But the real gap is structural and statistical, not productive.

🔍 Rethinking how we measure jobs and economic growth is no longer optional: it’s a precondition for designing realistic economic policies.

—
Carlos Pérez Pulido
ISHEA Institute – Economía 5.0

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