Stunning Ignorance of Basic Economic Principles
In a vein related to the last post, coinsider this story published a few days ago:

"Americans work more, seem to accomplish less" - Reuters.

Really? Let's look at what is masquerading as news these days. The article relates a "study" about worker productivity that basically claims today's workers are being pulled in so many different directions they are accomplishing less. Here's a quote:

Workers completed two-thirds of their work in an average day last year, down from about three-quarters in a 1994 study, according to research...

The biggest culprit is the technology that was supposed to make work quicker and easier, experts say. "Technology has sped everything up and, by speeding everything up, it's slowed everything down, paradoxically," said John Challenger, chief executive of Chicago-based outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

But wait. Who did the research? Day-Timers Inc., an East Texas, Pennsylvania-based maker of organizational products.

Hmm. Might they have a little bias here? How did they do the "study" anyway?

Sixty percent of workers say they always or frequently feel rushed, but those who feel extremely or very productive dropped to 51 percent from 83 percent in 1994, the research showed.

Put another way, in 1994, 82 percent said they accomplished at least half their daily planned work but that number fell to 50 percent last year. A decade ago, 40 percent of workers called themselves very or extremely successful, but that number fell to just 28 percent.

"We think we're faster, smarter, better with all this technology at our side and in the end, we still feel rushed and our feeling of productivity is down," said Maria Woytek, marketing communications manager for Day-Timers, a unit of ACCO Brands Corp.

The latest study was conducted among a random sample of about 1,000 people who work at least part time. The earlier study surveyed some 1,300 workers.

I see. The "study" was a survey of workers. Base10 has no doubt that todays workers are put upon, but he has never met a working person who didn't feel put upon. In spite of their subjective feelings, American workers today are the most educated and productive workforce in the history of the world.

What do you get from the headline, "Americans work more, seem to accomplish less?" Well, for one, it feeds into the idea that America is in some sort of economic malaise--a theme popular with the media today. America's productivity is suffering, claims the media. It's probably Bush's fault, too. The headline is loaded, and the study is garbage.

What is the truth? Is America more productive now than in the past? Let's see, who would know that? How about the Federal Reserve? Check out this article published by the San Fransico Federal Reserve Bank:

The performance of productivity in the U.S. economy has delivered some big surprises over the last several years. One surprise was in the latter half of the 1990s, when productivity growth surged to average an annual rate of over 3%, more than twice as fast as the rate in the previous two decades. A bigger surprise has been the further ratcheting up of productivity growth since the most recent recession. Even with a slowing to below a 1-3/4% annual pace in the second half of last year, productivity growth averaged around 3.8% for the 2001 through 2004 period. That is an extraordinarily high number by historical standards. It also is well above the consensus view among economists, which is that trend growth of productivity is on the order of 2-1/2%. [Citations omitted.]

So, productivity growth is "extraordinarily high by historic standards." That took all of ten seconds to look up on Google (which may be one of the reasons for said growth). Maybe that Reuters reporter should have done the same.
- posted by Base10 @ 9:21 AM