Has the Great Upshift arrived?: Another strong quarter for US productivity growth is far from conclusive. But it’s also a super encouraging sign. Let’s enjoy it. (JAMES PETHOKOUKIS, FEB 1, 2024, Faster, Please)
[T]he US Bureau of Labor Statistics today released the 2023 fourth-quarter result for nonfarm business sector productivity, and it was pretty good — again. Productivity rose by a better-than-expected 3.2 percent during the final quarter of last year and was up by 2.7 percent on a year-ago basis. Even better, productivity growth has now increased at a rapid pace for three straight quarters, including 4.9 percent in Q3 and 3.6 percent in Q2.
Given both the advances in artificial intelligence/machine learning, which emerged before ChatGPT in 2022, and similarly strong productivity numbers in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year, it’s certainly worth contemplating whether we’re seeing the start of a (hopefully sustained) period of elevated productivity growth. Which would be totally awesome for several reasons.
For starters — and this is the thing that’s top of mind for most people, including Wall Street — strong productivity growth has contributed to a “Goldilocks” scenario where inflation has declined even as the economy has continued to grow.
…as labor and energy costs trend towards zero.