United States
GDP per capita to 2060, by scenario
Constant-rate scenario path; the 2060 endpoint levels are illustrative, not forecasts.
Factor profile
The United States and China combine frontier models, compute and capital.
How this economy meets AI
Today’s production, workforce and automation baseline — context for the scenarios, outside the AGI Growth Index.
Where output comes from (% of GDP)
Where people work (% of employment)
Informal employment
Current automation exposure
Several parts of the economy could transmit AI’s effects. The pace depends on adoption by firms, connectivity and movement of workers between sectors.
Sources: World Bank WDI; ILOSTAT; Global Automation Atlas (Garg, Crosta & Baier, 2026). The latest available year is shown for each measure; vintages differ, so shares may not sum to 100.
Where the United States starts
The United States is one of two frontier superpowers, the countries that own the models, the compute and the capital. The scores are blunt about why. Compute and energy access, geopolitical positioning and AI diffusion capacity all score 5 out of 5; language inclusion is 4.9 and cyber resilience 4.8. The country holds roughly 80% of the world's tracked frontier training compute, the leading labs and the deepest capital markets. It tops the index under every scenario. The constraint is physical and largely self-imposed. Physical build speed scores 3.8, held down by interconnection queues, slow permitting and a grid that expands slowly. At about $90,027 per person, this is a high-income economy. Ten-year trend growth of 2.5% a year is what a mature frontier delivers before AI changes the arithmetic.
The three paths
These are simulations, not forecasts. The Modest path is the baseline, and the two AGI scenarios fork from it. Under the Modest scenario, AI stays a normal technology. The United States would grow 3% a year and rank 72nd of 157. That low rank is not weakness. In a modest world, growth comes from catching up to the frontier, and the United States is the frontier, with little room to converge. At 3% growth the economy doubles in a little over 23 years. Under Gradual takeoff, growth would climb through a two-decade ramp and reach 19.5% a year once AGI matures around 2045, ranking first in the world. At that rate the economy doubles in under four years. Under Fast takeoff, growth would reach 39.2% a year from the early 2030s, again first in the world, a doubling every two years or so. In both AGI scenarios the frontier's own compute, capital and labs drive the result. Regulation and politics could slow or redirect any path. How Americans and their institutions respond to transformative AI is a variable the model holds constant.
How you would know which world you are in
The three scenarios look almost identical until about 2030. Watch leading indicators, not GDP, and watch them live. Three global signals matter most. First, whether the METR task horizon curve keeps doubling every four to five months through 2027–28; METR publishes it at metr.org. Second, whether frontier lab revenue and capital spending keep compounding; Epoch AI tracks both at epoch.ai. Third, whether growth in the ten to twenty most-ready economies breaks above trend in the early 2030s. Here the United States is the bellwether itself. Double-digit growth within a couple of years of 2030 would signal a fast world. A point or two above trend by the mid-2030s would signal a gradual one. A fade back to trend would signal a modest one. America's own tells arrive earlier: gigawatt data center campuses reaching financial close, interconnection queues clearing faster, behind-the-meter generation coming online, and the capital spending of the frontier labs.
If growth goes explosive
For the United States, explosive is the world standard, not a stretch. It sets the frontier, so at 19.5% or 39.2% growth a year it runs faster than everyone else. At the gradual rate the economy doubles every four years; at the fast rate, every two. A child born now could reach adulthood in a country many times richer. The mix would tilt toward compute, power and the services built on them. The United States is an aging country that draws migrants, so there is no wave of emigration to reverse. Instead, rising labor demand and wages would pull in skilled workers from abroad. The honest downside is the grid. If power demand grows exponentially while transmission expands slowly, the frontier's potential gets stranded, and the build migrates to countries with cheaper, faster power. The hedge is to build generation and transmission ahead of demand. Even then, the pace-setter shifts to the state. FERC interconnection rules, NRC nuclear licensing, transmission siting across state lines and NEPA litigation would decide how fast the build happens.
What the United States can do now
Three levers follow from the scores, and two pay off whether or not AGI arrives. The first is physical build speed, at 3.8 and the heaviest-weighted. Grid, permitting and transmission matter under every scenario, so fixing them is a no-regret move: statutory shot clocks on approvals, one-stop permitting, limits on litigation delay, and transmission built ahead of demand. The second no-regret lever is climate and environmental resilience, at 3. Water and cooling defense protects the economy in any world, and both are inputs a data center build would need. The third lever is different. Catch-up headroom scores 1.2, because the United States is already the frontier, with little room to converge. There is no gap to close; the task is to protect the openness to talent, trade and capital that keeps the frontier moving. The United States can adapt a model from its only peer: China's "East Data, West Computing" plan routes data centers to western regions with cheap power. A cautious government can act on the two no-regret levers today and lose nothing if the skeptics are right. To see how moving these scores changes each path, open the atlas's policy editor.
Use the policy editor to test how different factor scores change United States’s modeled path. The roadmap builder below can then incorporate those targets into a 1,000-day planning prompt.
Drafted with Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, from the atlas’s data and an editorial template set by the author.
Create a 1000-day AGI and growth roadmap prompt
This prompt can be used with Claude, ChatGPT or an open-weight model hosted on your institution’s systems. It includes the atlas material for United States: the country brief, economic structure, region, archetype and global scenarios. It instructs the model to ask for local information, use existing strategies and the political calendar, and preserve the atlas’s interpretation rules. The prompt is assembled in your browser; the information entered here is not sent elsewhere.
1 · Read the brief → 2 · Set targets in the policy editor → 3 · Generate and copy the prompt → 4 · Run it with an approved model, with high reasoning effort and web access where permitted
Instructions are generated in the selected language; the data annex remains in English. Translations are machine-drafted, and corrections from native speakers are welcome through the contact links on the start page.