Spectral lines: Productivity: Its ups and downs

Concern about productivity is universal among the highly developed nations of the world. Productivity in the United States, measured in the traditional way (value of goods and services divided by the hours of work required to produce them), rose only 1.6 percent per year, on average, from 1967 to the present, compared with 3.2 percent per year from 1946 to 1966.