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U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

washingtonpost.com

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Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#41

Post by weberer »

slowhand09 wrote: post #29
sylens wrote: post #6

Perhaps people have had to expend more energy just keeping their personal life together in the last few years. People with children have had to deal with the constant school closings, childcare facility closings, etc. and that has taken its toll. They may have family members who got Covid or had treatment for other ailments delayed by the pandemic's rush to treat Covid patients. They could've experienced a huge shift…

Lets not discount the people who populate the reddit/r/antiwork forum. Noting like wasting oxygen the rest of the world needs.

I never heard about them until I saw that news interview. What a wild ride.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yUMIFYBMnc

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#43

Post by acdha »

sylens wrote: post #6

Perhaps people have had to expend more energy just keeping their personal life together in the last few years. People with children have had to deal with the constant school closings, childcare facility closings, etc. and that has taken its toll. They may have family members who got Covid or had treatment for other ailments delayed by the pandemic's rush to treat Covid patients. They could've experienced a huge shift…

I think you’re really on the right track with caregiving, and would add the blind push to force people back into offices without any recognition of the costs of those policies (or, often, perceptible benefits). Going into the office is fairly expensive in any case but it especially pushes parents towards needing daycare and aftercare services which were already expensive before the pandemic and became more so after a non-trivial number of providers found other jobs, became too sick to work, died, or decided the health risk wasn’t worth it after seeing that happen to other people. Our local parents group has had stories about people choosing not to go back to professional jobs because the employers insisting on RTO weren’t paying enough to make up for that, especially if they weren’t accommodating when someone’s schedule is disrupted.

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#45

Post by ElfinTrousers »

They ask just about everyone you can think of in this article about what's up with the US worker. They even ask Larry Summers, even though the only thing Larry Summers has to teach us is how to fail upwards consistently. Of course, they don't think to ask a, you know, US worker about what's up with them.

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#46

Post by kennend3 »

weberer wrote: post #41
slowhand09 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets not discount the people who populate the reddit/r/antiwork forum. Noting like wasting oxygen the rest of the world needs.

I never heard about them until I saw that news interview. What a wild ride. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yUMIFYBMnc

antiwork started off good but quickly went downhill.

I abandoned it some time ago because it is now a "pro-union eco-chamber".

I once advocated serious changes to the labour laws are what is needed, and was inundated with "join a union" posts.

It really speaks to just how out-of-touch these people are.

Unions only care about large corporations because they can get a lot of members and union dues. The issue with this logic is that small businesses are often totally out of the unions reach and laws benefit EVERYONE. The other issue they overlook is Union contracts only apply to those in the union and can change greatly from one union to the next.

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#47

Post by hooverd »

slowhand09 wrote: post #29
sylens wrote: post #6

Perhaps people have had to expend more energy just keeping their personal life together in the last few years. People with children have had to deal with the constant school closings, childcare facility closings, etc. and that has taken its toll. They may have family members who got Covid or had treatment for other ailments delayed by the pandemic's rush to treat Covid patients. They could've experienced a huge shift…

Lets not discount the people who populate the reddit/r/antiwork forum. Noting like wasting oxygen the rest of the world needs.

Nobody wants to work anymore, am I right?

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#48

Post by switch007 »

bdw5204 wrote: post #11

I think there's a very obvious reason for the "productivity drop": Return to Office I remember tons of studies showing that remote work had caused unprecedented increases in productivity so it seems plausible to me that companies ending it caused the productivity drop which caused the minor recession earlier this year (the big one due to the Fed's rate hikes is, I believe, still in the future). The article itself eve…

And yet my company likes to remind people on a daily basis that it's a privilege to be allowed to work from the offices (because they just refurbished them). Literally their wording. Completely detached from reality

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#49

Post by the_only_law »

kennend3 wrote: post #46
weberer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never heard about them until I saw that news interview. What a wild ride. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yUMIFYBMnc

antiwork started off good but quickly went downhill. I abandoned it some time ago because it is now a "pro-union eco-chamber". I once advocated serious changes to the labour laws are what is needed, and was inundated with "join a union" posts. It really speaks to just how out-of-touch these people are. Unions only care about large corporations because they can get a lot of members and union dues. The issue with this…

I just don’t get why you wouldn’t choose someone a little… brighter to represent you.
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