Skepticism about the "new economy" following the collapse of the tech bubble called for a sober assessment of what the actual role of technology and IT was in productivity. MGI's report found that IT was only one of a number of factors that led to significant productivity growth.
The labor productivity growth rate in the retail sector was more than twice that of the rest of the U.S. economy in the 1990s. But that productivity was unevenly distributed across different categories of retail.
Despite growth in IT spending in the banking sector from 1995 - 1999, labor productivity actually decreased over the same period of time. Retail banking did, however, see a high baseline of productivity growth when compared to the overall U.S. economy.
Labor productivity in the semiconductor industry saw labor productivity growth rates 35 times that of the U.S. average in the 1990s. Changes in output quality were the main drivers of this growth.
