Posted on 03/22/2016 4:20:33 AM PDT by expat_panama
On the surface, American workers aren’t as productive as they were before. But a dissection of the data seems to tell a different story.
According to recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, labor productivity fell 2.2% in the fourth quarter of 2015 compared to the third quarter. Year-over-year, it grew just 0.5%. But hours worked was up 3.2% quarter-to-quarter and 1.6% from last year.
Labor productivity’s official growth rate has been relatively meek since the financial crisis. Growth averaged 1.2% annually from 1973 to 1979 and steadily increasing...
...labor productivity only appears weaker during the course of a recovery, as more workers return to the workforce.
“Hours on a population-adjusted basis that still haven't quite recovered to where they were in 2007,” Barnier said. “So assuming everything else is fine, more hours worked is good for the worker.”
. Meanwhile, fixed assets relative to hours worked have declined, also making productivity appear to fall even if that’s not really what’s happening. Breaking down fixed assets into three main components – physical structures, equipment, and intellectual property – offers another clue into how technology is changing labor productivity.
The value of intellectual property and equipment compared to hours worked has been flat to modestly up since the recession. But investments in more pricey physical structures – factories and buildings, for example – have dipped compared to hours worked.
“What we’re really seeing is much more efficiency in the use of buildings,” said Barnier. “We're seeing smaller-footprint manufacturing coming from Japan to the U.S....
...we're seeing things like additive printing. We're seeing hyper-local manufacturing, all these technology trends, all of which are good, not bad.”
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Donald Trump will bring back American jobs.
To America.
That is what matters.
The article states that we still aren’t back to where we were in 2007... the year a Democrat congress took over, in preparation for 8 years of Democrat president/RINO congress.
I’m hoping to see a recovery soon after the next election.
Happy Tuesday! Stocks: yesterday edged up barely w/ scant volume and today futures are a tad upbeat. Metals keep leveling/edging up. Only report today: FHFA Housing Price Index. Seems like the bean-counters are all on vacation this week. We got new FR econ treads tho:
If he’s planning on hiring 15 million Americans then he’ll be too busy to be president.
I don’t know about that.
Trump works about 20-hour days. He only sleeps about four hours a night.
Some factors resulting in increased productivity per labor hour:
1) Advances in information technology have eliminated many hourly clerical, data collection, and reporting jobs. Today equipment does the work.
2) The implementation of lean manufacturing and just in time manufacturing has eliminated labor input to many manufacturing processes. Efficiently work flows, many with robots, require fewer humans to intervene in the movement of raw materials and finished goods through the facility.
3) Many hourly administrative jobs are performed by exempt managers. Managers type and send their own emails instead of dictating memos and letter to a typist or secretary. Managers create their own reporting and their own analyses of data instead of handing the work off to clerics or lower level managers. Data stored digitally can be retrieved instantly - no need for clerks to manually file and retrieve data.
4) Exempt employees are not paid overtime. Many administrative jobs in factories have been reclassified from hourly to non-exempt lower level management. Often these employees are working 60 hour weeks while being paid for 40 hours. In most of the companies I worked for, there was no such thing as exempt employees working a 8 hour day/40 hour week. Everyone in management worked 50-60 hours and many worked more, carrying home briefcases full of work to be done at home at night or on weekends.
> In most of the companies I worked for, there was no such thing as exempt employees working a 8 hour day/40 hour week.
I leave those kind of jobs - or let them fire me.
Please put me on the list. Thanks.
You’re on it!
Tx fer the heads up. They said "Hours on a population-adjusted basis that still haven't quite recovered to where they were in 2007” and that's what I'm seeing too:
Since 2007 (when Pelosi took over and O came to Washington) the average American took a 10% cut in hours per week.
We have had a phony recovery. Electricity consumption proves it. It has been flat for 8 years after decades of nearly uninterrupted growth.
why is a non citizen here on fr lecturing on American topics?....don’t you have something better to do in your new country?...it does not concern you anymore what happens here....
My indication of the (non) recovery is the traffic. During the Bush years, whenever I would get near a certain freeway exit, traffic would start slowing down, so that by the time I reached the exit, I would be going maybe 35-40 MPH. The 70/270 split feeding traffic into Baltimore and DC was a few miles later, and what I saw every day was the traffic backed up before the split.
I moved from that area, and returned a few years earlier during Obama’s presidency. I made the same commute at the same time every day. However, the traffic was almost never backed up just before my exit. And on the occasions when I would have to go to DC, the traffic backups didn’t start occurring until a few miles AFTER the split.
Not as much traffic=not as many people commuting=not as many working.
I see the same thing here in Houston. First week of March it was like someone turned off a light switch on my route to downtown. At first I attributed it to Spring Break but that is over now and the light switch is still off. The back-up is five miles further in toward 610 and the pace from there is much faster than earlier in the year.
Oil field layoffs are setting in. The downtown eateries are about half empty this week. The sidewalks at noon are lightly populated. It is eerie. The one bright spot of the economy has faded. The outlook is bleak for at least two years to come and maybe more.
Obungo got an economy that was on its knees and has kicked it to the ground. There are days when I wonder if we will be like the UK and never recover?
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