For example, labor productivity rose at an average annual rate of 3-1/4 percent from 1948 to 1973, whereas in the period 1974 to 2016, the average growth rate of productivity was about 1.7 percent.
That is to say that, with the important exception of the information technology (IT) boom beginning in the mid1990s, the U.S. economy has been in a low-productivity growth period since 1974. The record for the past five years has been particularly dismal. 1/8  BIS central bankers' speeches  How much does productivity growth matter? A great deal.