Specifically, employing disaggregated data from the national income and product accounts, this research finds that the measured growth of real output and productivity in the service sector is implausibly weak, given that the return to owners of businesses in that sector apparently has been well-maintained.
Indeed, the published data indicate that the level of output per hour in a number of service-producing industries has been falling for more than two decades. It is simply not credible that firms in these industries have been becoming less and less efficient for more than twenty years.