In fact, the long-term earnings projections of financial analysts have been marked up noticeably over the last year and seem to imply very high earnings growth and continued rising profit margins, at a time when such margins are already up appreciably from their depressed levels of five years ago.
It could be argued that, although margins are the highest in a generation, they are still below those that prevailed in the 1960s. Nonetheless, further increases in these margins would evidently require continued restraint on costs: labor compensation continuing to grow at its current pace and productivity growth picking up. Neither, of course, can be ruled out.