Productivity has rebounded in the last decade while manufacturing employment has declined sharply. The present study uses data on industrial output and employment to examine the sources of these trends. It finds that the productivity rebound since 1995 has been widespread, with approximately...

The present study is the third in a series of three papers devoted to issues in the measurement of productivity and productivity growth. The major findings are as follows. First, this study shows that the new data set used here, which develops data on total output, business sector output, and...

This report presents the results of a rapid, low-cost survey that collects labor market data for individuals in the United States. The Yale Labor Survey (YLS) used an online panel from YouGov to replicate statistics from the Current Population Survey (CPS), the government’s source of household...

This paper examines the state of the United States economy as it emerges from the 2001 recession. A comparison of several central economic variables indicates that the 2001 recession was the mildest recession in the postwar period. In light of highly differentiated characteristics of recessions,...

The present study analyzes the "productivity slowdown" of the 1970s. The study also develops a new data set -- industrial data available back to 1948 -- as well as a new set of tools for decomposing changes in productivity growth. The major result of this study is that the productivity slowdown...