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Comment by jjk166 | Hacker News Reader

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://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/productivity

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It's just the corporation friendly mass media trying to combat calls for better worker treatment/compensation. This is just the next single from the album that brought us "quiet quitting", "the great resignation", "millennials are lazy", etc. It's important for the backers of these media outlets to float these stories out there, lest anyone become sympathetic to workers in light of the facts that minimum wage hasn't kept up with either inflation or productivity, that corporations are engaging in profit inflation, that the fed is intentionally raising rates to wrest back some power from workers, and so on.

Also the cries for returning to the office

I guess it’s helpful to own all the media when you need to spread your propaganda around.

Yes, this is "proof" that remote work is less productive.

Literally one of these on the front page of the NYT today, fully of chirpy anecdotes about people ditching the sweatpants and silly comments about how much our dogs will miss us when we go back to "real work".

You may kindly shove it, NYT. I'm not going back.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/29/technology/return-to-offi...

really a bit hard to believe that these kinds of articles aren't paid for by some industry group

Do you believe they aren't for some reason? It's not like they release whose buying ads if you ask.

It is. The NYT Real Estate section is a pretty sickening read for most of the 99% who aren't totally disconnected from reality and don't have a million plus in cash to toss away on a second home.

Every time I've read that section, it felt like product placement for luxury home realtors and commercial property owners.

Years ago the NYT was great. Now it's so cringy that half the time you wonder if it was hacked / hijacked by TMZ. Sadly, in terms of trust and credibility TMZ wins. It's never anything less or more than it promises to be. If only other media outlets were as honest and had as much integrity.

I agree but I’d say it’s become more like something that resembles Huffington Post than TMZ.

I mean, NYT also is telling us that lace is in style for men right now sooo if you have to ditch the sweatpants for the office maybe consider a lace overcoat? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/style/mens-wear-lace-fash...

Yeah, this "new" trend of "quiet quitting" sounds so silly. People have been behaving like that for a very long time and they've probably always done it.

It’s worse than silly. I had to ragequit this (https://hbr.org/2022/09/when-quiet-quitting-is-worse-than-th...) article from HBR on “quiet quitting” after reading:

> Quiet quitters continue to fulfill their primary responsibilities, but they’re less willing to engage in activities known as citizenship behaviors: no more staying late, showing up early, or attending non-mandatory meetings.

Yes, we should all bereave the withering of classical virtues—like sacrificing our health and time with loved ones in order to provide free labor.

Such nerve. Instead of the talking about the downsides of increased surveillance and quantification of worker performance, blame the worker for not going above and beyond. As an employeee in this new landscape, of course you'll save powder for your official requirements, that's OKRs and KPIs working as designed.

> that the fed is intentionally raising rates to wrest back some power from workers

The fed is increasing interest rates to keep dollars attractive as a world currency and allows the US governments to keep increase national debt whithout sending interest rate of through the roof.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but letting inflation going out of control would have a major negative impact on demand of debt issued in dollar or, to make it short, US government debt.

The only alternative would be to fund government spending with government revenues. Which means, increase taxes for categories of revenues which amount the most in national revenues.

Just remember who owns the WaPo and it makes a lot more sense.

> "In the first half of 2022, productivity — the measure of how much output in goods and services an employee can produce in an hour — plunged by the sharpest rate on record going back to 1947, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics."

It annoys me that an article about a big drop in workplace productivity doesn't actually say how big the drop is. If it's only 3.6%, then that explains why they glossed over that part, as it would have undermined their narrative.

It serves the important function of giving journos an opportunity to interview business consultants about what CEOs think of their employees' poop breaks.

Which, in generating lots of hate clicks, is a huge economic boost in terms of Nonfarm Business Sector Labor Productivity!

> In the first half of 2022, productivity — the measure of how much output in goods and services an employee can produce in an hour — plunged by the sharpest rate on record.

Given the sharpness of the drop, the timing with wonkiness in a whole slew of other economic indicators, it's bizarre to me that the author (and experts interviewed) would immediately assume that something changed with workers vs the metric is behaving weirdly.

Thanks for adding some context. The "max" or 25 year view on that chart provides some perspective. Still unusual that there's been a recent decrease, but almost every measure of the economy has seen some really weird values in the past 2 years.

I think a chart of the job titles of the dead / disabled from COVID with numbers would be incredibly useful.

My niche has shot through the roof for demand salary and remote with no sign of turning back.

My only macro explanation is 20% left the gig totally.

The Washington Post is Bezos's mouthpiece - lower worker productivity hurts his bottom line so we have to suffer through his paper complaining about it.

Also Bezos would like to normalize the intense surveillance, speed focus, and corner-cutting that leads his warehouses to have injury rates 80% higher than the rest of the industry.

https://thesoc.org/amazon-primed-for-pain/

Always read the comments first.

usually it's the other way around

It’s almost never the other way around

Shut up and work harder nerd.

> To be concerned about the current level of productivity requires either the attention span or the intelligence of a goldfish.

It seems like the median journalistic piece assumes this of the reader anyways?

And we still have GDP growth and no real signs of recession.

That article was awful with just guesses left and right on causes, without even measuring how the number is calculated.

*mentioning rather.

> requires either the attention span or the intelligence of a goldfish

Good thing I have both.

Wow. Much needed context.

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