US sees largest productivity drop since 1947 [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

US sees largest productivity drop since 1947 [pdf]

bls.gov

51 pointsren_engineer19 comments

The title is misleading - the productivity drop in Q1 2022 is almost equal to the increase in Q4 2021. Together, they average out. This is visible on the first graph, where two roughly equal bars go up and down on the right hand (near-present) side.

Overall productivity seems to be up since 2020, according to the hours worked / output series in chart 3. Output had already recovered to pre-pandemic levels in Q3 2021, but hours worked did not - leading to an improved productivity ratio as the BLS calculates it.

It fits the narrative of getting employees back into the office; because WFH employees are unproductive, just look at this study.

That is why Chart 3 is especially ironic, it shows productivity recovering before hours worked. (I wouldn't over-interpret this though, I don't know how any of these statistics are calculated.)

What? There is no such thing, WFH employees are more productive without interruption.

Until Judge Judy starts.

I know that, you know that, other WFH employees know that. My comment above was tongue-in-cheek; it's studies and reports like the linked PDF that management and Clevel will use to delude themselves and employees to comeback into the office.

I was wondering who Clevel was before I realized you meant C-level.

I vote for a compromise. We stop pushing for WFH and instead demand for dedicated office space. Individual offices where we have a home away from home and enough privacy.

The amount of times I had to hold a fart in, struggle to pick my nose, or put on loud earphones just to focus in an open plan office is unacceptable.

My individual dedicated office is at my house. I don’t want to drive any amount of time to sit in a room at a computer and do the same thing.

Sometimes I want to work elsewhere, and will go to the park or just sit in a parking lot somewhere.

The only benefit I see to physical proximity is the unexpected encounters that can help resolve business situations or help ideas flourish.

I'd actually strongly prefer to work from the office if I actually had an office. But basically all employers insist on these horrendous open office plans these days, so WFH it is.

I'll go into the office when I'm paid for both commute time and lunch.

"Nobody wants to work anymore, and I can't do my job from my beach house because I can't see the employees on the office camera and they're covering their camera at home. How can we re-tell this productivity data that shows productivity is increasing to prove that I'm right and everyone is lazy except me?"

Can’t speak for everyone but if salaries don’t start tracking with inflation I see no reason to work hard

Totally agree, with one slight tweak: add "cost of housing and food" to that. The former rises faster than inflation and has been for decades.

Someone in the government really pulled off a slick move when they managed to disconnect "inflation" from "increases in the cost of housing and food", didn't they?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OPHNFB#

The last big bump came after the great recession. Labor got squeezed out by necessity. This time, it's almost like the reverse. We worked drastically less hours right at the beginning, but output didn't fall in lockstep. Productivity increased, but has dragged its feet since more and more people reenter the workforce.

If you zoom out, the pace looks on track with the overall trend before COVID, so perhaps it's just a neutral outcome with no major takeaways.

Someone break down how they are calculating productivity. Agile story points???

The relative change in the number of goods/services for sell. This is determined by taking the $ output and then dividing by regularly adjusted industry specific normalizing factors to try to convert $ to quantity.

Labor productivity (what this article is mentioning) is then further divided by total hours worked across all considered industries.

It’s turtles all the way down.

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