fiscal stagnation

Fiscal Drag in 2013 by Menzie Chinn

From Torsten Slok at Deutsche Bank:

[F]iscal drag in 2013 is 2.4%, ie if GDP growth in 2013 ends up being 1.7% then if we had not had the fiscal drag then GDP growth would instead have been 4.1% (=1.7% + 2.4%). ..

...Translated into nonfarm payrolls this means that instead of having nonfarm payrolls at 186k - the average monthly number so far for this year - then nonfarm payrolls would have been more than 400k...