In 2020 and 2021, productivity soared when firms found ways to keep producing while many employees were away from the workplace (figure 1). Meanwhile, the economy shifted away from services—a lower-productivity sector—and toward goods—a higherproductivity sector—as households substituted new televisions for dining out and family vacations. As a result, average productivity moved up.
These temporary changes have  See Mehrdad Esfahani, John G. Fernald, and Bart Hobijn (2020), “World Productivity: 1996–2014,” ASU Center for the Study of Economic Liberty Research Paper (Tempe, Ariz.: Arizona State University, March). 2 See Robert J. Gordon and Hassan Sayed (2019), “The Industry Anatomy of the Transatlantic Productivity Growth Slowdown,” Working Paper 25703 (Cambridge, Mass.