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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

#61

Post by SauciestGNU »

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…

Yeah no kidding. If it were demanded of me to RTO after this time of working remote, they wouldn't get quiet quitting, they'd get active sabotage while I search for a new job. There's no excuse for torturing ICs with RTO for reasons of executive vanity.

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

#62

Post by [deleted] »

jimlongton wrote: post #58
throwaway22032 wrote: post #27

I'm pretty sure I know why... The working environment changed. Bit by bit I moved from an environment with gentleman's agreements and so on towards something in which everything was codified, safetyism became rampant, etc. In the UK over the past few years I went from going into a nice office in a number of beautiful old buildings, getting my stuff done with cameraderie, having lunch together and playing board games,…

> towards something in which everything was codified, safetyism became rampant Those "gentleman's agreements" were not that great if you happened to be a woman, gay or any other minority. The upsides to HR, employment regulation and so on has been making the office a far better place to work for a lot of people. While I agree that there are rampant problems in a lot of sectors, from low skilled to medical, there have…

[deleted]

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

#63

Post by reitanqild »

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'm not unionized (I cannot because none of them are purely work focused here and I deeply disagree with their other views), but here is an observation from Norway, 20 years ago:

AFAIK, unionized companies in Norway statistically were more profitable than ununionized ones.

This might of course be because it is more tempting to unionize when there is a lot of money to be had, but I remember one extra detail:

In between (friendly) ribbing I also remember the union people here being focused on working efficient so that our bonus would increase :-)

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

#64

Post by sylens »

D13Fd wrote: post #59
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…

You're right about daycare/school closings. Even now, essentially post-covid, if our two-year-old gets COVID, that's a 10-day quarantine from daycare. That's 10 days where one of the parents has to work from home and be horribly unproductive because they are watching a child at the same time. And you can get COVID repeatedly. It often from the daycare itself, but also from a sibling who is in school. Even with full,…

Not only that, but sometimes even the threat of an outbreak can hamper the availability of childcare. Last winter, a few staff members were exposed to a close contact, so they held them out of work as a precaution - but that resulted in one of the rooms having to close for a week.

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

#65

Post by sylens »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #51
notfromhere wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business formation surged since the pandemic, but Gen Z is going to have a hard time with it because they’ll be more broke than millennials

Only if they need a lot of capital. Everything else about starting a business is far, far easier than ever. Almost every state in the US has streamlined the business formation process, made it cheaper and faster, etc.

Except for the fact that you won't have healthcare

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

#66

Post by BaseballPhysics »

fazfq wrote: post #5
kennend3 wrote: post #4

Perhaps people are at the point of revolt over the ever widening productivity vs pay gap? https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ Productivity kept on climbing and wages stagnated post ~1980 Time for the workers to reap some of that benefit.

It's supply and demand - the supply of workers has doubled the last decades while demand has remained roughly the same. I think it's a miracle that salaries are so high currently.

Assuming that's true--and I'm not sure it is--mass retirement of baby boomers, which has already begun due to forced retirement during the pandemic, is going to absolutely decimate the labour supply, which has enormous knock-on effects (including a rise in inflation).

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

#67

Post by enragedcacti »

the_only_law wrote: post #49
kennend3 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IIRC most users and moderators or /r/antiwork were opposed to anyone doing interviews on behalf of them. The person who did just unilaterally decided to do it anyway.

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

#68

Post by scruple »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #66
fazfq wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's supply and demand - the supply of workers has doubled the last decades while demand has remained roughly the same. I think it's a miracle that salaries are so high currently.

Assuming that's true--and I'm not sure it is--mass retirement of baby boomers, which has already begun due to forced retirement during the pandemic, is going to absolutely decimate the labour supply, which has enormous knock-on effects (including a rise in inflation).

You can go back to the year 2000 and find Fox News and CNN talking heads warning us about the impending doom of baby boomers retiring and taking the economy with them. Any year now...

What has actually transpired in the meantime has been record breaking bailouts, corporate handouts, and profits, while workers pay remains in stagnation and housing market inflation goes through the roof (because of slow development, IMO, attributed to NIMBYism, mixed with a nationwide inability to build densely or build public transportation infrastructure).

edit/ And let's not forget, there have also been 2 disastrous, major wars, one of which inarguably never should have occurred.

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

#69

Post by lotsofpulp »

sylens wrote: post #65
Kon-Peki wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if they need a lot of capital. Everything else about starting a business is far, far easier than ever. Almost every state in the US has streamlined the business formation process, made it cheaper and faster, etc.

Except for the fact that you won't have healthcare

They have access to the same health insurance, it is just expensive, which goes back to needing capital.

It is trivial to go to healthcare.gov and buy the same health insurance an employer subsidizes for employees.

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