The Productivity Renaissance in the U.S. Service Sector

This article, which is closely related to the previous article, is also by Andrew Sharpe of the Centre for the Study of Living Standards. It points out that there now appears to be a renaissance in productivity growth in the U.S. service sector, with output per worker growing five times faster in the 1995-98 period than in the 1981-95 period. This development appears to reflect the impact of the massive investments in information technologies, which finally now seem to be producing large productivity gains in a wide range of service industries.