Since the unemployment rate from the mid-1990s to 2012 on average was roughly 4.5 percent, the current unemployment rate of 2.4 percent means that the unemployment rate has almost halved. This decline in the unemployment rate also has helped to raise productivity, which I will touch on next. Productivity Growth Productivity also has been rising in tandem with the improvement in employment.
Since I have talked about this in the past, here I only would like to note that it has been rising. 7 Let me just briefly summarize the reason behind this occurrence. When an economy is in recession, firms curtail investment in physical assets, human resources, and research and development.