The Early 21st Century U.S. Productivity Expansion is Still in Services

Barry Bosworth and Jack E. Triplett

International Productivity Monitor, 2007, vol. 14, 3-19

Abstract: Labour productivity in the U.S. non-farm business sector grew two and a half per cent per year during the 1995-2005 period, nearly double its growth rate over the previous two decades. Services sector labour productivity (LP) and multifactor productivity (MFP) grew more rapidly and substantially exceeded productivity accelerations in the goods sector. We show that the services sector accounted for three-quarters of U.S. MFP growth after 1995, and within services the contribution of MFP to LP growth exceeded the vaunted contribution of IT investment. We also find that the services sector has become even more important as the primary source of sustained productivity growth after 2000. In this study, we compute LP, MFP and contributions to growth accounts for 57 industries within the goods and services sectors, using the new NAICS-based data set. We also show that resource reallocations, which are a newly important factor in productivity analysis, have changed the relation between increases in industry productivity growth rates and aggregate and sector growth rates in surprising ways.

Keywords: Labour productivity; Multifactor productivity; Service sector; Resource reallocations. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E01 F00 O11 O25 O31 O40 O47 O51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.csls.ca/ipm/14/IPM-14-bosworth-e.pdf (application/pdf)
http://www.csls.ca/ipm/14/IPM-14-bosworth-f.pdf version en français (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sls:ipmsls:v:14:y:2007:1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.csls.ca

Access Statistics for this article

International Productivity Monitor is currently edited by Andrew Sharpe, Executive Director

More articles in International Productivity Monitor from Centre for the Study of Living Standards 170 Laurier Ave. W, Suite 604, Ottawa, ON K1P 5V5. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CSLS ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).