Productivity in the post-pandemic world: old trend or new path?

Key takeaways

• After rising during the pandemic, productivity growth has recently fallen back to or below pre-pandemic trends. The strong performance of the United States has been the notable exception.
• Structural factors combined with pandemic-related disruptions explain the cross-country differences. Persistent structural headwinds – weak investment, ageing, trade fragmentation – constitute key risks to the global productivity outlook.
• Sustaining productivity growth cannot be the task of countercyclical macroeconomic policies. The clearer path to long-term prosperity is through growth-enhancing structural policies.