Why You Should Be Glad That Workers Are Less Productive Than In 2021

Worry instead that productivity growth was weak during the decade before Covid struck (though I think I know how we can fix that).

In 1975 National Lampoon showed its readers what it felt like to put your nose to a grindstone. No wonder productivity was declining!

During the Covid pandemic, when office workers stopped coming to the office, productivity (that is, worker output per hour) boomed. Since the Great Recession, productivity had been rising on average a miserly 1.2 percent annually, but during the first quarter of 2021 productivity grew by an astonishing 4.3 percent. In The Washington Post, Heather Long reported that “a growing number of economists say this is not a blip and could turn into a boom — or, at least, a ‘mini boom’ ― with wide-ranging benefits for years to come.”

It turned out to be not a boom, nor even a mini-boom, but a blip. The proportion of workers who never go to the office is still elevated at around 29 percent, according to Gallup, compared to 8 percent before Covid. But now, instead of boosting productivity, remote work seems to be depressing it. Or, if not remote work, something else, because productivity has declined over a record-setting five consecutive quarters. Even though the economy is not in recession, the Wall Street Journal concludes that we’re in a “full employment recession” because Gross Domestic Income (GDI), a sort of companion statistic to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), has declined for two consecutive quarters, even as GDP has risen. Bosses in Silicon Valley are so worried about declining productivity that they’re replacing coffee machines with microdoses of the hallucinogen ketamine. You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. Count yourself lucky if your boss hasn’t yet handed you a hypodermic needle and a rubber hose.

I don’t think we’re in a full employment recession. Or, if we are, it isn’t anything to fret about. On the other hand, we should worry that productivity growth was weak for the decade before Covid. To that problem, I have an ingenious solution, and it isn’t anything Art Linkletter would lose sleep over. To learn what that is, you’ll have to read my latest New Republic piece. You can read it here. Meanwhile, for God’s sake, keep your nose away from any grindstones.