Having increased 1.6% per year from 1990 to 1995, output per hour in the non-farm business sector - a conventional measure of productivity - has risen at an annual pace of about 2.6% since 1995.
Cyclical forces - such as the inability of businesses to add to their payrolls as rapidly as they would have liked in response to the rise in demand - have probably played some role in these efficiency gains. But I suspect that longer-term, structural changes, reflecting the boom in capital spending and the revolution in information technology, probably have been more important.