Productivity Roars Back

Makers of goods from Campbell's soups to the springs in Harley-Davidson motorcycles are keeping a resurgence in productivity going longer than most economists thought possible.

For the past five years, productivity - a measure of employee efficiency - raced ahead at an annual rate of 3.3%, almost double the clip of the previous quarter century. Based on past expansions, that trend should be about played out by now, as companies run out of ways to wring more output from their workforces. Instead, after falling for the first time in five years at the end of 2005, productivity came roaring back in the first quarter, economists expect a Labor Department report this week to show. And the pace may last another 10 years, according to research published in April by Harvard University economist Dale Jorgenson.