Barclays forecasts US 30-year yield could hit 6% amid productivity growth

The US 30-year Treasury yield hasn’t started with a six-handle since Bill Clinton was in office. Barclays thinks that’s about to change. In a note published September 29, Anshul Pradhan, the bank’s head of US rates research, argued that the 30-year yield could climb to 6% if artificial intelligence investment by major tech companies translates into sustained productivity gains across the economy. The last time yields breached that level was June 2000, during the final stretch of the dot-com boom. The case for 6% The 30-year yield already sits at 5.61% as of September 28, its highest reading since 2002. That represents a full percentage point increase from its March 2026 low of 4.61%, a 100-basis-point move in roughly six months. Pradhan’s argument hinges on what happens next with AI capital expenditure. According to the Barclays note, US technology giants are expected to spend as much on AI infrastructure this year as they did in the previous three years combined. The core logic works like this: higher productivity growth means the economy can sustain faster expansion without overheating. But it also means the Federal Reserve’s so-called neutral rate, the interest rate that neither...