U.S. Productivity Growth: The Slowdown Has Returned After a Temporary Revival

Robert J. Gordon ()

International Productivity Monitor, 2013, vol. 25, 13-19

Abstract: There was never any slowdown in productivity growth in U.S. manufacturing during the postwar period, and indeed there was an unprecedented explosion of manufacturing productivity growth between 1996 and 2004. But the share of the manufacturing sector in the total economy has declined from 30 to 10 per cent since the 1950s. The record for the other 90 per cent, consisting of all the economy outside of manufacturing, is far less encouraging; in non-manufacturing labour productivity growth fell from 2.95 per cent per year in 1948-72 to 1.29 per cent per year in 1972-96. After a brief revival to 2.63 per cent in the brief eight-year period 1996-2004, the growth rate slumped again to 1.47 in the past eight years. This examination of the data provides evidence that the revival of productivity growth associated with the dot.com revolution is over, that multifactor productivity growth in the total economy has returned to the rate achieved in the post-1972 slowdown years.

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.csls.ca/ipm/25/IPM-25-Gordon.pdf (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:25:y:2013:2

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 ).