September 21, 2026

The below transcript is a translation of the podcast audio that has been machine generated by Notta.

Hi everyone. This is Taylor St. Germain with ITR Economics. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of TrendsTalk. We at ITR are you’re apolitical and unbiased source of economic intelligence. And today I wanted to talk about the broader economy, but really peel back the curtain to look at which industries are driving the highest rates of growth. There is growth across the economy. There are certain areas of the economy that are struggling. We’ve talked about this K-shaped economy on previous episodes of TrendsTalk. And today, I really wanted to give you an update on some of the higher technology, higher growth drivers. In terms of GDP, life is all well and good, we have seen GDP continue to perform well and I’m talking real GDP. It’s what we track in our ITR Trends Report, so you can head over to the Trends Report to see more on the GDP forecast.

I’m just not operating much in the GDP world as an economist right now because it’s really important to, again, really peel back this curtain and understand what’s driving the majority of this growth. And if you’ve been paying attention to the media or even just a baseline understanding of the economy, you know it’s really these high technology industries that are driving the majority of the economic growth in our country right now. AI, data centers, semiconductors, those are some of the areas with the highest growth rates. And I wanted to call out a few of the data sets that we’re looking at that really support this high level of growth. We look at a data set that we refer to as US AI investment. It comes from the SEC, very well known organization, of course. And when we look at the most recent readings in this data, we see that AI investment on a year-over-year basis is up 70.5%. That’s obviously one of the most impressive growth rates you’ll find out there in the economy when you think of these growing industries. But what’s really impressive about that 70% growth rate is we’ve been experiencing really between a 70 and 80% growth rate in AI going all the way back to 2024. So this is not just a moment in time. We’ve seen this year-over-year growth rate consistently at this elevated level, which is just impressive. I know we all have our feelings about AI, whether they’re positive or negative. I certainly can sympathize with some, with both sides, but regardless of how you feel, there is so much investment going on. That 70.5% year-over-year growth rate coincides with a $651.7 billion worth of investment over the course of the last twelve months alone. Massive number folks. And that’s clearly driving a lot of the economic growth. A big portion of that second quarter GDP number that was released here in the US was tied to AI in the secondary market supporting it. So there is a lot of investment going on in this industry.

And we also received an updated survey from the Census Bureau. It comes from the Census Bureau of Business Trends and Outlook Survey, the BTOS. It’s really interesting survey, publicly available for all of you out there. So please check it out. But what this shows is an update on companies that reported using AI in the month of August, really over just a two week period of time in August. And it showed that there are a number of industries that are using AI above 30%. You know, we look at industries like education services, finance and insurance, professional and technical services, information services. All of those industries have above a 30% utilization of AI. Those are really the industry’s leading the way. But even some of the blue collar industries are jumping on this AI trend. You look at industries like agriculture, construction, retail trade, wholesale trade, manufacturing all between 10 and 20% utilization, which is higher than where we were at the beginning of the year when we looked at the January version of this survey. So utilization rates are clearly climbing, we’re clearly building momentum. Now again, some of those blue collar industries, even though they’re improving at 10 to 20%, for those of you in blue collar industries, don’t feel like you’re too far behind if you’re not utilizing AI yet, there’s still plenty of time to jump on this trend. But it’s clear there’s more adoption of the technology. The utilization rates are rising, and those investment growth rates are just remarkable when you look at an industry like this.

I’ll also add that we’re continuing to see growth in data centers. Data center construction is up 33.5% year-over-year. These are some big double digit growth rate industries. And that is about $59.4 billion worth of data center construction just in the last twelve months. We do have this industry growing at a double digit pace. Yes, the growth rates aren’t the 50, 60, 70% that you saw just two years ago, but I’d still say 33.5% is an attractive enough growth rate for me. And we would expect growth in the data center industry to stay about at that level, maybe dropping down in the mid to high 20% range all the way through 2027. So it’s a great industry to look to, to offset some of the decline in ’27 that you might see in more of the legacy manufacturing markets. And then, you know, I always throw semiconductors in, an industry that I’ve held close and worked in past lives. And semiconductor production here in the US is up almost 27% year-over-year. And we’re at a record high production number for semiconductor production here in the US.

So when you think of these big, I call them big three technology sectors – semiconductors, data centers, AI – it is driving a massive amount of growth out there. Now, of course, there’s always challenges that come along with this growth. You know, things like higher electricity costs with all the data center construction and the AI infrastructure build out. There are going to be opportunities in some construction industries and supporting manufacturing industries to really support these markets. But it is clear that these markets are really leading the way. When you look at some of the legacy manufacturing markets, automotive about flat. Oil and gas extraction up 3%. Food production essentially flat year-over-year. Chemical flat year-over-year. You’re seeing that just a lot of the attention and growth and dollars are really being put closer to these higher technology industries. So anyway, you can continue to diversify your business into these higher technology industries certainly going to help you fare better in 2027. Now, I’ll cover it on another version of TrendsTalk here in the future.

I’m not saying that all of these markets outside data centers, AI and semiconductors aren’t going to grow. It’s just not the double digit growth rates that we’re really seeing out there in these three primary industries. So it’s clear where folks are focused. It’s clear where the stock markets focused here today. And we certainly don’t want you to ignore that trend, but rather be a part of it. And that’s why we bring some of these data sets to light here. I want to thank you all for joining me on this episode of TrendsTalk. As always, please like and subscribe to TrendsTalk wherever you listen to your podcast. Thanks for joining me on this one. Look forward to seeing you on the next one. Thank you. Take care for now.