Which sectors caused the slowdown of labour productivity in the US?
While labour productivity in the US industry sector is volatile, growth rates since 2005 are certainly lower than in the past 10 years. The market services sector has also seen a long-term fall in labour productivity growth since the 1998 peak. But it is the US construction sector that is one of the most important drags on labour productivity growth. In 2007, construction sector labour productivity fell 12% accounting for a fall of 0.6 percentage points of total economy productivity growth. These trends started between two and four years before the crisis.
