If so, then potential output could be higher than many current estimates suggest. Over the past few years, we have also seen evidence of a pickup in U.S. productivity growth, albeit from the very depressed average pace that prevailed  5  More-educated workers and older workers both have lower structural unemployment rates, at least historically; see Aaronson, Hu, Seifoddini, and Sullivan (2015).
Inside the Reserve Bank, the view was that within the policy trajectory, it did not matter if we paused briefly as long as we remained committed to the eventual outcome. The dilemma then boiled down to communicating to the market that our action should be interpreted only as a comma and not a full stop.