
Productivity Growth in the US Continues to Decline - maxwell
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/productivity-in-the-us-continues-to-decline/
======
rgbrenner
_Productivity as a whole had been in a downtrend every year since it peaked in
2003_

Where is the source for this? What is the source for the "long term decline"
mentioned in the article?

The first sentence mentions the BLS, so I went there, and this is not what
they say.
[https://www.bls.gov/data/#productivity](https://www.bls.gov/data/#productivity)

If you dont want to go through the various data, here are some articles with
charts:

This one covers since the last recession:
[https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-6/below-trend-the-us-
pro...](https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-6/below-trend-the-us-productivity-
slowdown-since-the-great-recession.htm)

This one goes back further, but only up until 2012:
[https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-3/what-can-labor-
product...](https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-3/what-can-labor-productivity-
tell-us-about-the-us-economy.htm)

~~~
mc32
Meetings, meetings, more meetings and meetings about meetings, meetings about
making meetings productive, etc. We need fewer of them and the ones we do have
should have a point (i.e. decisive)

They shouldn't by default be thinking out loud brainstorming sessions to be
investigated and possibly executed later some day after it's trickled through
proper approval requiring additional meetings.

~~~
chrbarrol
Here's what I don't get about this though, was there less meetings back in the
early 2000s? I'm only 24 so I don't know, but if there is one thing I feel has
been passed down from seniors as a software developer it is that in the early
2000s managers loved holding meetings.

~~~
projektfu
You're right, there have been companies plagued by meetings for a long time.
The difference is the kind of work we do. Now it's mostly "knowledge work" and
service work. Parkinson's law--work expands so as to fill the time available
for its completion--is probably the culprit these days. As long as people can
complete their jobs before the deadlines, they will also tend their virtual
farms and talk about nothing with their coworkers at the virtual water cooler
on Slack. It's no longer cool for employers to tell their workers to get back
to work and stop talking and playing games.

------
kurttheviking
Not mentioned in the article but a possible source discussed at an Economics
of AI conference in Toronto[0] (among other places) is the idea of a
restructuring lag[1]. In effect, we as a society are investing an enormous
amount of capital in activities that augment or replace existing economic
activity but have not yet completed the transition.

For example, auto and tech companies are investing heavily in self-driving
vehicles. At the same time, very few vehicles have been economically displaced
as a result of that investment. In effect, we went from spending $X on cars to
$X+$Y where $Y is self-driving research. Thus, productivity as measured in an
aggregate economic sense, starts to fall. If anyone knows of more research on
this argument, I'd love to know more.

[0] [https://www.economicsofai.com/nber-conference-
toronto-2017](https://www.economicsofai.com/nber-conference-toronto-2017) [1]
[https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59c2a584be42d60a2772b...](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59c2a584be42d60a2772ba71/t/59c2b0f78dd041729ad41800/1505931530673/Brynjolfsson.pdf)

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abstrct
As a Canadian, the thing that always astonishes me about working with my
American counterparts is how many calls you want to have, and how often the
topics discussed are the exact same points as the previous calls.

No agenda? No Call.

~~~
brightball
It’s because the person who wanted the call doesn’t actually write anything
down from the call. Nothing gets documented, referenced, rechecked. Emails can
at least be reviewed later.

No such luck with calls. Everybody wants to have calls and calls bypass
documentation...so they want to have more.

I’ve always wanted a BPM system that hooks to my company calendar and
automatically requests meeting notes to post from the person who called the
meeting...and blocks them from requesting more meetings until those notes have
been posted.

Think of it as spam filter for meetings.

~~~
beamatronic
You are really into something. You want a system that will block access to a
resource until some process/workflow requirements are satisfied.

~~~
solatic
Too bad you can't force people to review prior meeting notes before initiating
a new call or meeting.

Simple truth: technology will not fix your culture problems. The most
technology can do is serve as a scapegoat for organizational policy, e.g. "the
system won't let me do X" instead of "my boss won't let me do X".

If you want to change your culture, then reward positive behavior, fire
sources of unapologetic cultural toxicity, and hire people who believe and
profess the cultural change you seek.

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drawkbox
Wage stagnation has a hand in productivity decreases. Wages are pretty much
stagnant since 2000 even in upperclass compared to costs rising [1]. People
are working harder and losing ground, that is exhausting.

The Great Recession gave companies a decade of excuses for not giving real
money wage increases, not just real compensation which people can't actively
spend as consumers [2]. America has efficiently worked out wage increases of
real money, yes 'real compensation' has moved but people can't spend that and
most of it is not used.

The velocity of money is decreasing at a scary rapid clip since 2000 [3]. More
money goes to wealth as inequality has increased. Less money in lower/middle
is changing hands.

All of this leads to less reason for longer term employees to innovate and
increase productivity.

Wages do have an impact on productivity and the skills people bring, American
businesses have efficiently worked them out for the short term gains and long
term drain. Wages are a key aspect in capitalism growth that seem to be the
most fought against. Companies today have forgotten that wages are as American
as it comes.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/upshot/the-great-wage-
slo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/upshot/the-great-wage-slowdown-of-
the-21st-century.html)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/opinion/corporate-
america...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/opinion/corporate-america-
suppressing-wages.html)

[3]
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V)

------
meri_dian
Here's the problem with measures of productivity: they are uniformly terrible.

Productivity exists nicely in the minds of economic theoreticians but concrete
measures if it so often seem unable to capture nuances of the modern economy.
It's not that it's impossible to do, it's just hard to consider all the
product offerings available to consumers. If we take some time to think out of
the box, we see that productivity has definitely gone up over the past decade.

For instance, let's consider content-delivery-to-consumer productivity.
Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, etc have all vastly increased the ratio (video
content)/(cost to aquire) and (video content)/(time to aquire). Not only have
consumers been spared the once necessary and time consuming trek to
Blockbuster, $15 which would have once afforded you a few video rentals a
month now gives you access to the entirety of Netflix's library of content.
Amazing!

This is a textbook example of productivity, possible only because of
technological advances, but it is not captured in traditional measures of
productivity.

So we must disregard them.

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fancyfish
Management should in some cases be its own career path instead of the default
for good workers who get promoted. Good project management is a skill that we
just expect out of people who get promoted.

The pay scale should change so good hackers, analysts, etc can get raises akin
to getting promoted, and the same for project managers. Because a good manager
should be able to cut out the feckless meetings, get people working where they
are most productive, and make a good working environment.

~~~
bryananderson
This is a great point—management really is its own skill. However, I think
it’s also important that managers be skilled in the specialty that they
oversee, especially if it is complex work like software development. I think
that an excellent manager with no knowledge of software development (aside
from attending an “agile summit” or something) would struggle to effectively
manage a team of developers.

That’s what makes software development management so hard: to be good at it,
you have to be a good manager _and_ a decent developer, which are completely
orthogonal skills.

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pascalxus
They make a good point about workers not able to stay at a job longer than a
few years. I'm sure this impacts productivity quite a bit.

This article assumes that productivity is accurately being measured
(GDP/worker hours) and doesn't address this issue. It would be interesting to
see a breakdown per industry to see where the ups and downs are. I mean,
you've got companies like google that generate a lot of money per worker, and
they could do even more if they didn't invest in the future and only worked on
stuff they had a monopoly for (search).

Jobs have become increasingly specialized, I wonder if this affects the
measurement of productivity.

~~~
notfromhere
Employees aren't really incentivized to stay very long at positions,
especially if you're looking for income growth. Most companies will cap you at
2-3% raises that basically incentivize you to switch positions for XX% salary
increases

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ericabiz
Needs a (2016) added to the title. Article is from May 2016

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gaius
Communication facilitated the outsourcing and offshoring of the real economy.
Want to see where the productivity has gone? Look to Shenzen and Bangalore.

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rsuelzer
Maybe it will come back in line with wage growth... If wages won't go up,
maybe productivity will need to go down. :)

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bitwize
Okay, let's have a huddle where we open JIRA tickets to decide which meetings
we should have to formulate the stories for that feature? Because I really
don't think we can move the needle on solutioning this without a team-first
approach?

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jmosk56
How is productivity measured?

~~~
gervase
It looks like the BLS measures productivity as the dollar value of goods and
services produced over the hours used to produce them.

Not much detail on those the dollar value is calculated, though.

Edit: I found a (somewhat patronizing) slideshow designed for K-12 students:
[https://www.bls.gov/k12/productivity-101](https://www.bls.gov/k12/productivity-101)

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all_blue_chucks
U.S. Productivity Measurements Fail to Capture Digital Economy Output

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purplezooey
The article fails to discuss executive compensation and stock buybacks, on
which companies spend an enormous amount, and do not lead to any productivity
gains.

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dboreham
Second Derivative Alert...

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ohazi
i.e. Slack is making everyone in your office less productive.

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thomasmarriott
The way out is up.

