Productivity in Information-Technology Sectors
Skyrocketed in the 1990s
The measured productivity performance of America's
whole economy--the rate of increase in labor productivity in
all of nonfarm business--has not been especially impressive in
the 1990s: only some 1.6% per year.
The measured productivity performance of America's
information technology industries has been much more impressive:
an average annual rate of increase of value added per worker
of nearly 11% per year.
And the measured productivity performance of those
industries that produce information technology goods--semiconductors,
fiberoptics, and so forth--has been astonishing: an average annual
rate of increase of value added per worker of nearly 25% per
year.
