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A senior Bank of Canada official says the need to improve productivity has reached an emergency level as the economy faces a future where inflation may be more of a threat than in the past few decades. “You know those signs that say 'In an emergency, break the glass?' Well, it's time to break the glass,” Bank of Canada senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers said in a speech Tuesday. Rogers said Canadian labour productivity eked out a small gain at the end of last year, but that came after six straight quarters where productivity fell. She noted the U.S. has...

More than two-thirds of managers report that they’re under immense pressure to squeeze more out of their workers, according to a recent Slack survey of 18,000 knowledge workers. Amid major concerns about stagnant or declining worker productivity in the post-COVID era, one would think government and corporate leaders might ask whether they themselves aren’t the ones doing something wrong. One thing many of them ignore to their own disadvantage is the extensive evidence that flexible hybrid work is more productive than forced in-office work for the same roles. For example, according to the annual report by the Office of Personnel...

Today the BLS released Labor Productivity and Costs for 2023 Q1. Let's take a look. Labor Productivity Details Labor productivity, or output per hour, is calculated by dividing an index of real output by an index of hours worked by all persons, including employees, proprietors, and unpaid family workers. Nonfarm business sector labor productivity decreased 2.7 percent in the first quarter of 2023 Output increased 0.2 percent and hours worked increased 3.0 percent. From the same quarter a year ago, nonfarm business sector labor productivity decreased 0.9 percent, reflecting a 1.3-percent increase in output and a 2.3-percent increase in hours...

LAST PARAGRAPH: "From February 2022 to February 2023, real average hourly earnings decreased 0.3 percent, seasonally adjusted. The change in real average hourly earnings combined with a decrease of 0.9 percent in the average workweek resulted in a 1.2-percent decrease in real average weekly earnings over this period."

Alarm! Even Joe Biden’s hate speech towards Republicans can’t mask the horrid inflation on his watch. As if Biden watches anything other than ice cream cones. On a YoY basis, US Productivity is down for the 3rd straight quarter (and 4th quarter of the last 5). On the mirror image of productivity, unit labor costs rose 3.5% QoQ (a notable slowing from the 8.9% QoQ growth in Q2). This was the 6th quarter in a row of rising unit labor costs (but was less than the +4.0% QoQ expected)… However, on a YoY basis, that is the fastest growth since...

CNN analyst Van Jones opined that "coming into Labor Day weekend, you are starting to see the beginnings of what could be a blue wave. The disastrous Afghanistan exit, runaway inflation, the growing ineffectiveness of the covid vaccines, and murder rates not seen since the 1990s are just fading memories. Democrat voters will rally to vote for the Party's traditional values—more abortions, more income redistribution, higher taxes, LGBTQ rights, and clean energy. Don't be surprised when you see a bigger Democrat majority in the House and Senate after the votes are counted in November." He went on to dismiss complaints...

Nonfarm business sector labor productivity decreased 4.1 percent in the second quarter of 2022, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today, as output decreased 1.4 percent and hours worked increased 2.7 percent. From the same quarter a year ago, nonfarm business sector labor productivity decreased 2.4 percent. This is the largest decline in the series, which begins in the first quarter of 1948. Hourly compensation increased 5.7 percent in the nonfarm business sector in the second quarter of 2022. Real hourly compensation, which takes into account changes in consumer prices, decreased 4.4 percent in the second quarter of 2022,...

Aug 9 (Reuters) - U.S. worker productivity in the second quarter fell at its steepest pace on an annual basis since 1948, the Labor Department said on Tuesday, while growth in unit labor costs accelerated, suggesting strong wage pressures will continue to help keep inflation elevated. Nonfarm productivity, which measures hourly output per worker, fell at 2.5% pace from a year ago. It also declined sharply in the second quarter at a 4.6% annualized rate, after having declined by an upwardly revised7.4% in the first three months of the year, the report showed.

PROVIDENCE, RI — According to the results of a new study conducted by Brown University, exactly 100% of work meetings ever held in all of human history, across all industries and sectors, have been entirely unnecessary. Researchers followed careful criteria while observing real-life business meetings to understand what constitutes a successful meeting. Successful meetings, they said, would qualify as a valid use of time. Researchers took detailed notes on employee engagement, follow through on meeting action plans, and whether or not meetings were actually about something. In all meetings observed, none met the criteria of a successful meeting and were...

US labor productivity tumbled by 7.5% in the first quarter of 2022 -- the largest decline in worker output per hour since 1947, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. The report also showed that unit labor costs, or how much workers are paid per unit of output, surged by 11.6% during the quarter. That reflects a 3.2% increase in hourly compensation and a 7.5% decrease in productivity. Analysts polled by Refinitiv had projected a 5.4% decline in productivity and a 9.9% rise in labor costs. Thursday's data underscores the robust labor market, where competition for workers has pushed up...

One week ago, ahead of today’s Chinese data release which would for the first time capture the devastation from the coronavirus pandemic, we wrote that “to those who have been following our series of high-frequency, daily indicators of China’s economy, it will probably not come as a surprise that the world’s second biggest economy has ground to a halt, its GDP set to post the first negative print in modern history. To everyone else who is just now catching up, we have some news: it’s going to be bad.” Specifically, we said that ahead of official Chinese economic data which...

California, with a productivity growth rate of +1.7 percent from 2000 to 2017 was the biggest contributor to AmericaÂ’s productivity growth, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The nonpartisan Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as a branch of the of the U.S. Department of Labor has been calculating productivity measures for the U.S. economy since 1884 by measuring labor market activity, working conditions, and price changes in the economy. The BLS has regularly reported that the U.S. productivity annual gains have fallen relentlessly from a +2.7 percent in 1966 to just a +0.5 percent recently. But in a new...

U.S. natural gas production set an all-time world record last week despite prices hitting a new annual low and down 85 percent over the last 14 years. After dominating world natural gas production for 50 years, American production peaked in 1972 at about 21.7 trillion cubic feet.  As annual production slumped to about 18 trillion cubic feet for the next 33 years, prices rose from about $0.59 per thousand cubic feet (tcf) to a record high of $18.95 per tcf in September 2005. But thanks to 80-year-old George Mitchell, who pioneered modern hydraulic fracking techniques in the suburbs of Fort Worth...

When we celebrate Thanksgiving this week, I will give thanks for property rights. Property rights allow each individual or family to do what we want with our small piece of the world without having to answer to the whole community. On Thanksgiving, we'll probably be told to think of America as one big family -- and for some people, government is the head of that family. That idea warms the hearts of America's new "democratic socialists." But thinking like that nearly destroyed this nation before it began. The Pilgrims at Plymouth didn't share a feast with Indians after arriving in...

While the concept behind open office spaces is to drive informal interaction and collaboration among employees, the study found that for both groups of employees monitored (52 for one company and 100 for the other company) face-to-face interactions dropped, the number of emails sent increased between 20 and 50 percent and company executives reported a qualitative drop in productivity. “[Organizations] transform their office architectures into open spaces with the intention of creating more [face-to-face] interaction and thus a more vibrant work environment,” the study’s authors, Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban, wrote. “[But] what they often get—as captured by a steady...

Start up the grill. Get the burgers and chicken going. And start imbibing. You deserve it, according to a new work study. “We’re hard workers. We deserve the day off,” says Liz Bagot, a spokeswoman for NationalToday.com, which conducted the survey of 2,000 Americans. It turns out the average American works harder than our Japanese counterparts or the average European worker. “Statistics show that Americans work longer hours than the majority of other countries — 137 hours per year more than Japanese, 260 per year more than in the UK,” according to the study. By the way, when the comparison...

Every three days Nathan (not his real name), a 27-year-old venture capitalist in San Francisco, ingests 15 micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide (commonly known as LSD or acid). The microdose of the psychedelic drug – which generally requires at least 100 micrograms to cause a high – gives him the gentlest of buzzes. It makes him feel far more productive, he says, but nobody else in the office knows that he is doing it. “I view it as my little treat. My secret vitamin,” he says. “It’s like taking spinach and you’re Popeye.” --snip -- Young developers and engineers, most...

The fact that it’s being proposed by Republicans doesn’t make it any more economically palatable. Madness is rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule — Friedrich Nietzsche ‘Cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat; it was not the only way,” Barack Obama declared after Democrats’ disastrous losses in the 2010 midterm elections. That shellacking finally killed off the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. From it was born the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and the Obama administration’s war on coal, in turn a contributory factor to Donald Trump’s election and Republicans’...

An article by Lance Selfa, a columnist at the "Socialist Worker", argues that economic growth does not help working people: “One of the orthodox assumptions of both liberal and conservative economics is that a more productive economy leads to higher living standards. According to the theory, when workers are better educated and better trained, and when technology is intelligently deployed to increase economic efficiency, the overall economy produces more and workers earn more. Or so the theory goes. What's the evidence?” In fact, Selfa's argument has been routinely rejected by economists for the following reasons. First, the article ignores the...

Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, weighed in last week on one of the pressing issues facing the Trump administration and the country — slow economic growth. Greenspan's explanation is novel and is bound to be controversial. To preview: He blames the welfare state and overall uncertainty for the slowdown... ...average annual productivity gains for four periods since 1950. ANNUAL PRODUCTIVITY GAINS 1950-70: 2.6% 1970-90: 1.5% 1990-2010: 1.9% 2010-15: 0.4% As you can see, productivity gains since 2010 have virtually disappeared. At this rate, incomes would double every 180 years. By contrast, they'd double in 36...