There is fairly strong evidence that employment in the Irish economy is concentrated in low productivity activities such as construction and the public sector. It is clear that wider technology diffusion is the corrective factor needed to avoid us sleepwalking into a competitiveness demise.

Trucking is incongruous with what we've come to expect with the blue-collar economy these days. Productivity improvements mean that other industries are scaling down whereas it still takes one driver per truck to move goods, and there is little way around that. What's more, other industries can outsource, but trucking can't.

This is a new paradigm. The fact that we have higher productivity has allowed the U.S. economy to grow more and grow more rapidly without triggering the usual inflation pressures.

Productivity gains have been strong in the current period, allowing the economy to recover without creating jobs.

What's new about the global economy is First World productivity combined with Third World wages. That can create some real downward pressure on high-wage countries.

The index reflects the broader trend of productivity growth in the U.S. economy that has driven prices lower on goods while allowing prices for services to rise modestly,