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.
The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the BIS or its member central banks.
