Moreover, for equipment with active secondary markets, such as computers and networking gear, productivity may also have been boosted by a reallocation to firms that could use the equipment more efficiently. For example, healthy firms reportedly have been buying equipment from failed dot-coms. Businesses may also have managed to eke out increases in output per hour by employing their existing workforce more intensively.
Unlike cutting fat, which permanently elevates the levels of productivity, these gains in output per hour are often temporary, as more demanding workloads eventually begin to tax workers and impede efficiency.