It's an even less insignificant part of "3%" given that real GDP growth during that period was less than 3%, in part due to declining birthrates and a population growth rate below historical norms.
But it's also kind of cherry picking numbers because that bracket starts just after the housing crisis and is measuring the recovery. The 2000-2010 bracket was 0.71%, compared to historical numbers around 2% (but also historical real GDP growth of more like 4%).
You also have to discount some amount of real GDP growth for the general category of "banks doing bank stuff" which increases GDP a lot on paper even though it's somewhere between net neutral and actually destructive of underlying value, e.g. credit availability and low interest rates causing higher housing prices and higher total interest paid which both get booked as GDP "growth" even though they don't imply any actual productivity increase and negatively impact quality of life for working people.
The result is that population growth is the majority -- but by no means the entirety -- of "real" real GDP growth. (There is also an interesting effect where population growth has non-linear effects, because more people results in both more minds working on productivity improvements and more people who can benefit from each of those improvements, resulting in a quadratic productivity increase with population.)
But it's concerning that real GDP growth per capita has declined from its historical norms since 2000, even though we now have even more "banks doing bank stuff" than we used to. And it's probably not a coincidence that this has coincided with increasing amounts of regulatory capture and business consolidation.
But it's also kind of cherry picking numbers because that bracket starts just after the housing crisis and is measuring the recovery. The 2000-2010 bracket was 0.71%, compared to historical numbers around 2% (but also historical real GDP growth of more like 4%).
You also have to discount some amount of real GDP growth for the general category of "banks doing bank stuff" which increases GDP a lot on paper even though it's somewhere between net neutral and actually destructive of underlying value, e.g. credit availability and low interest rates causing higher housing prices and higher total interest paid which both get booked as GDP "growth" even though they don't imply any actual productivity increase and negatively impact quality of life for working people.
The result is that population growth is the majority -- but by no means the entirety -- of "real" real GDP growth. (There is also an interesting effect where population growth has non-linear effects, because more people results in both more minds working on productivity improvements and more people who can benefit from each of those improvements, resulting in a quadratic productivity increase with population.)
But it's concerning that real GDP growth per capita has declined from its historical norms since 2000, even though we now have even more "banks doing bank stuff" than we used to. And it's probably not a coincidence that this has coincided with increasing amounts of regulatory capture and business consolidation.