Indeed, as of the first quarter of this year, productivity in the nonfarm business sector rose 2.4 percent over the previous four quarters, its fastest pace since 2010 when the U.S. economy was coming out of the Great Recession. By contrast, in both the 2001–07 and 1982–90 economic expansions, productivity growth was actually slowing relative to its average pace during those expansions.
That said, while identifying inflection points in trend productivity growth in real time is notoriously difficult, a pickup in trend productivity growth relative to the pace that prevailed earlier in the expansion is a possibility that we should not, I believe, dismiss.