381–390 of 751 posts
Now, what if instead my company hires some other external business, to perform the same function with the same people at the same price? What happens to productivity?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
During Covid, people were hiding in their homes, quarantined, with nothing to do but work. This year, companies expect workers to return to office, despite little change in conditions, except now we have to deal with all of the above issues you've just mentioned, AND the fact that employees have now proven they can work remotely perfectly well. It should neither be surprising that in a system where healthcare is tied…
All of what you've both said, plus the number of people who thought or still think COVID-19 is "no big deal" who now have a pulmonary deficiency and long-term mental fog.
Whenever there is a problem people look for someone to blame.
The easiest thing is to create a new process to avoid this in the future, and be protected against blame.
If this proceeds unchecked, the process grows and grows until every little thing takes forever. The processes need to be pruned sometimes too, not just added onto.
These things always really need a giant flashing neon note that "productivity" doesn't mean how much workers get done but how much money is made off of what workers get done. They're only loosely connected, and most productivity gains have come from workers having to "do less" to "make more".
It's even stupider than that: it divides this figure by a largely fabricated estimate of how many hours people actually worked. This is a SWAG metric that is largely made up. The commentary is most likely irrelevant.
Wittgenstein's ruler comes to mind: what is 'productivity' measuring? A quick glance at the chart in the article suggests that the variance of this metric is huge. It is more or less a white noise source with a small DC offset. Given the formula the BLS uses, I would be hard pressed to calculate my own productivity (outside of lawyers and people working on assembly lines or at fast food establishments most people do…
The best connection I could think of is something related to the company output, but in a market downturn I could be working 12 hour days, and the company would still be doing worse...
US Worker productivity is 0.7 standard deviations below its average over the last 3 years. It is 3.6% below all time high. It is higher now than at any point before July of 2020. YOY Productivity growth has dipped negative and then went back to positive 20 times in the past 22 years. To be concerned about the current level of productivity requires either the attention span or the intelligence of a goldfish. https://t…
US Worker productivity is 0.7 standard deviations below its average over the last 3 years. It is 3.6% below all time high. It is higher now than at any point before July of 2020. YOY Productivity growth has dipped negative and then went back to positive 20 times in the past 22 years. To be concerned about the current level of productivity requires either the attention span or the intelligence of a goldfish. https://t…
Which, in generating lots of hate clicks, is a huge economic boost in terms of Nonfarm Business Sector Labor Productivity!