Sometimes it’s easy to miss significant news when central bankers drone on about the economy. To be sure, the media carefully dissects official statements on monetary policy, parsing each sentence for subtle changes from previous announcements.

But lengthier remarks, such as speeches and testimonies, include numerous observations about the economy, not all of which lend themselves to glib headlines.

Indeed, as Sydney Morning Herald contributing editor Michael Pascoe recently observed, most of the news regarding Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Governor Glenn Stevens’ speech before the Econometric Society Australasian Meeting and the Australian Conference of Economists in early July focused on his remarks about jawboning. In fact, we covered that aspect ourselves.

But as Pascoe notes, Stevens’ speech also contained a kernel of good news about the economy that went largely unnoticed amid all the commentaries about the exchange rate: Australia’s labor productivity is rising.

In his speech, Stevens said, “ … the environment seems likely to be one in which a number of sectors are making serious efforts to contain costs and lift productivity.”

Furthermore, he continued, “Perhaps more fundamentally, a better trend for productivity, if we can sustain it–and especially if it can be further improved–would be a reliable basis for optimism about the longer-run prospects for the economy and our living standards.”

Overall labor productivity has grown at a pace of 2.0 percent per annum over the past three calendar years, a huge jump in contrast to the 0.9 percent annual rate that prevailed over the preceding six-year period ending in 2010.

Prior to that earlier period, Australia’s labor productivity averaged around 2.1 percent annual growth over the long term, so the recent improvement is essentially a reversion to historic levels.

And the increase in productivity has occurred despite stagnating wage growth, as the rate of inflation outpaces increases in real wages.

Of course, the resource sector is driving these gains, but even excluding mining and utilities, productivity is growing at a 1.6 percent annualized pace, compared with 1.0 percent over the prior period.

As Pascoe wrote in a previous report, the excesses that were tolerated during the commodities boom must now give way to cost-cutting and greater efficiency. So with mining investment on the wane, the resource sector is keen to wring greater productivity from existing assets.

At the same time, a substantial portion of the increase in productivity could be resulting from the natural evolution of the business cycle. Projects that were initiated during the boom are moving from their construction phase to their production phase.

Coupled with the high productivity that naturally results from the capital-intensive mining sector, overall productivity is likely to continue at a high pace at least for the next few years.

That’s underscored by a recent presentation from Harvard economist Dale Jorgenson, as recounted by Morgans economist Michael Knox.

In analyzing the sources of economic growth among the G7, Jorgenson observed that Canada, a country similarly rich in resources, underwent a fall in productivity during its own resource sector boom.

Why did this occur? According to Jorgenson, it all comes down to how the national accounts are calculated. Although new construction increases the long-term productive capacity of the mining sector, it will create the appearance of a lag in productivity until these projects come on line.

As such, Jorgenson believes that now that Australia’s mining sector is entering its production phase, the country will see a dramatic recovery in total productivity.

And that optimistic outlook is certainly something to keep in mind as we process the typically dour takes from Jorgenson’s fellow practitioners of the so-called dismal science.