openpolitics.com

Why Is Productivity So Weak? Three Theories

From 2011 through 2015, the government’s official labor productivity measure shows only 0.4 percent annual growth in output per hour of work. That’s the lowest for a five-year span since the 1977-to-1982 period, and far below the 2.3 percent average since the 1950s.

.. During the 2008 recession, labor productivity soared. Was this because employers laid off their least productive workers first? Because everybody worked harder, fearful for their jobs?

.. Think about a business that is investing for the future. It hires a bunch of people and opens new offices and builds new factories. But while it is doing all that stuff, its actual productivity is quite low. It has a lot of people working a lot of hours, but very low economic output until its operations are fully up to speed.