What happens when productivity hits a wall? Well growth slows for one. And we saw that with the gross domestic product numbers that came out just last week. 

GDP growth slowed to 0.5 percent and at least some of that has to do with a similar slowdown in productivity growth.

Neil Irwin is a senior economics correspondent at the New York Times, and he wrote a piece looking at what might be going on with America’s declining productivity. Irwin spoke with Kai Ryssdal.