经济周刊资本投资浪潮仍在继续

30 January 2026 Richard de Chazal, CFArdechazal@williamblair.com+44 20 7868 4489 Economics WeeklyThe Capital Investment WaveContinues Louis Mukamalmukama@williamblair.com+1 312 364 8867 William Blair One of our enduringthemesfor several years now has beenthe unfolding capex revival. While there have been a fewfalse starts for the manufacturing sector, which has been inrecession for the better part of three years now, we thinka recovery is finally gaining traction. In the equity mar-kets, this should be increasingly reflected across a broadergroup of industrial companies. We view this as a structuralrevival that is being supported by four key pillars—a tightlabor force, an aging capital stock, an innovation boom, andgovernment intervention.In thisEconomics Weekly,weoutline our key arguments for this structural revivaland what has changed over the last year or so, particu-larly with regard to the policies that the Trump admin-istration is attempting to institute. for the benefit of corporate profit margins (exhibit 2). Ifcompanies were given the choice between dipping intoa deep pool of cheap and flexible labor or investing inmore-expensive and inflexible capital that depreciatesover time, companies naturally chose labor over capital. This shift also helps to explain why productivity growthhas been so poor for decades: quite simply, companies didnot need it when labor was cheap and abundant. That isnow changing. Exhibit 1 shows that business fixed investment has beenthe fastest-growing economic sector since the pandemic.Notably, that growth has also continued despite the sharprise in interest rates, which has crushed residential in-vestment over this period. Since the pandemic and even in the few years prior toits onset, that pool of available labor has been shrinking,and demand is now greater than the available supply(exhibit 3). Boomers are retiring, the birth rate is muchlower, and economic policy has shifted from one of openborders and encouraging greater immigration to closedborders and deportations. A Structurally Tight Labor Market The first pillar supporting this capex expansion is thecurrent regime shift from a global supply glut of labor to astructural supply shortage. The glut was brought about bythe baby boomers entering the workforce(particularly theincreased percentage of women working),supplementedby globalization and outsourcing, and mass immigration.This demographic expansion was further buttressed bymillennials and echo boomers entering the labor force. Inaddition, better health and less manual labor has meantthat baby boomers have been able to extend their workinglives and retire later. Throughout this period, the abundance of labor, thecrushing of the labor unions, and the threat of outsourc-ing meant that employee compensation was squeezed William Blair Indeed, this sentiment on labor shortages was capturedin the most recent December NFIB Small Business JobsReport, where companies remarked: Renewing an Aging Capital Stock The second pillar is the need to update the capital stock. We are unable to find anyone willing to work.We have to pass on jobs because we do not haveenough employees. –Manufacturing, TN Companies increasingly came to this realization duringthe pandemic, when most of the workers went home andfew were left to keep the old machines running efficiently.At that point the average age of the capital stock hadreached 16.9 years, or the oldest it has been since 1961,with many of those machines being held together withsticky tape and bubble gum (exhibit 5). We are a niche business, requiring highly skilledemployees. We lost three and are struggling tomeet customers’ expectations. Most of our workis custom fabrication of vehicles, including engineswaps, custom paint and body modifications. Verydifficult to find and retain people with these spe-cialized skills. –Services, TX Since then, companies have started to invest, and the av-erage age is beginning to slowly come back down, thoughthere is still plenty of room to go. Businesses that find a way to improve the numberof skilled employees and maintain that aspect ofbusiness will be able to exceed expectations theyset for themselves. The construction industry islacking currently with skilled numbers of employ-ees and the future looks worse. This holds back anypossibility of a small business expansion, simplybecause there is a lack of people to get them there.–Construction, MO Qualified applicants? Where are they?– Retail, MO These shortages could start to shift the historical dynam-ics depicted in exhibit 2, putting more upward pressureon wages and salaries, and threatening those margins.To offset this, companies know they increasingly need toinvest in automation, innovation, and productivity initia-tives (exhibit 4). The Innovation Wave and Still Early Daysin the Productivity Super-Cycle The global economy is still quite clearly setting thefoundations upon which to support the third pillar—aninnovation wave