If productivity is strong, that means the US economy is doing more with less, or being more productive. Productivity is measured by dividing all the goods and services produced in the economy by every hour people worked. “But the economy did well, so that translated into higher productivity, supporting higher wage growth and fending off inflation from accelerating.”Last year’s productivity boom could also be a combination of all of the above. Still, it may be too soon to know if last year’s productivity burst was truly a transformative shift in the US economy. “Sometimes at the very end of an economic cycle, productivity can be boosted by cost-saving measures,” Goodwin of New York Life Investments said.

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Persons: ” Lauren Goodwin, Mark Zandi, John Min, Austan Goolsbee, It’s, ” Min, ” Goodwin, ” Organizations: DC CNN, Labor Department, New York Life Investments, CNN, Microsoft, Meta, Citigroup, Monex, Federal Reserve, Chicago Fed, Bloomberg Locations: Washington