I said the evidence for technology-driven acceleration in productivity is compelling, but not conclusive. Indeed, there are a large number of economists who doubt that the rise in productivity growth is anything more than a cyclical phenomenon or some type of statistical aberration.
To be sure, they say, nonfarm productivity growth has risen in recent years, but they note that there have been other periods in our postwar records that exhibited similar patterns of acceleration only to fall back to subnormal growth. Many analysts offer as the explanation of the recent acceleration the slow pace of labor productivity growth earlier this decade.