Annual labour productivity growth (output per person employed) increased from a 0.2% per annum in the first quarter of 2005 to 1.8% in the fourth quarter of 2006. The crucial question is again whether this recent improvement is of a temporary or permanent nature.
In real time, it is very difficult to distinguish a potential change of the longer-term trend from cyclical and temporary fluctuations in the productivity  2  The participants in the ECB survey expect real GDP growth of 2.5% in 2007 and 2.3% in 2008. The longer-tem growth expectations (i.e. for the year 2011) of the survey participants remained unchanged at 2.1%.