Productivity has fallen, and experts are puzzled. I’m not. We’re all just tired

This is just an artifact of the measurement process. Energy prices plus some global supply chain issues has spiked inflation. That makes (1) everything more expensive and (2) under measures output due to inflation adjustments.<p>Plumbers aren&#x27;t plumbing slower than they were before. They look less productive because they have to spend more on gas. And the $100 an hour, or whatever, of economic output is discounted more than it should be because of how we measure inflation.

This reads like typical top 1% B.S. My previous employer kept cutting benefits (401k matches, health premiums, health copays, coinsurance) and meanwhile magically the Head of Product is buying a 3M condo, the executive team is having 4 day &quot;offsites&quot; at Napa (when we have perfectly great conf rooms right here), and the CTO just got an M5.<p>It doesn&#x27;t take geniuses to realize the money isn&#x27;t being distributed equally. Yeah productivity has fallen -- it was the only lever regular workers have.<p>Why take on added stress when it doesnt turn into shared success?<p>The bosses want more for less. Politicians want to just import overseas labor (whom they treat as semi-slaves) so they can reduce salaries and working conditions for everyone (&quot;work more or else i&#x27;ll replace you with a lower paid H1 that I can abuse because they are desperate&quot;)<p><i>SHARED SUCCESS</i> will magically fix productivity issues.

If you have been at work for a long time in the same kind of job role, you will notice that you do many more tasks than you used too, that you are expected to do more hours to cover gaps and the organization does not fully resource your team. The perks you had in your contract have been reduced and denied to new people. There is no staff canteen, no extra pay at weekends, every day is just part of the normal working rota. You will also see more computer automation and generally less people. So if the workers are working harder and smarter and more flexibly for less, I wonder where all that increased productivity was wasted and by who.

Ooooh, this is a pet peeve of mine! The productivity measure in economics is only tangentially related to how hard people work. Consider this, productivity is defined as the sum total of goods and services produced divided by total hours worked. If a company is highly automated, productivity will be higher than for a company in the same domain that is less automated. This has nothing to do with how hard employees work at either company.<p>Also, if the sum total of goods and services produced by an industry is not tightly coupled to hours worked, productivity will just fall with falling sales. So, if Google sells less of their GSuite subscriptions, but doesn’t do layoffs, productivity will fall. And this has very little to do with how hard individual Google employees work.

Wow imagine creating ai driven platforms that dominate our attention causing people to stare at their phones for 6+ hours a day in the name of progress and then being confused as to why people aren’t doing just more and more on top of more

Workers understand inflation and they&#x27;re working less because they&#x27;re being paid less.

Just for the sake of argument, I&#x27;d ask everyone to consider the counterfactual.<p>Let&#x27;s talk about a normal year, for starters, to have a base to talk about. Suppose we have:<p>5% increase in nominal money supply<p>Which breaks down into 3 parts: population growth, productivity growth, and inflation.<p>So for example, in a normal year we might have:<p>1.5% increase in population<p>So that means we have 3.5% leftover that either has to be accounted for by productivity growth or inflation. In an average year we might have:<p>1.5% productivity growth<p>2% inflation<p>(There would actually be some small fractions here, but I&#x27;m simplifying the math because this is just a Hacker News comment. Feel free to work out the precise numbers yourself.)<p>Typically, we know the population growth fairly well, and we think we know the inflation number fairly well, so the estimate for productivity growth amounts to &quot;Whatever we have left over after we subtract out the population growth and the inflation.&quot;<p>But what if we got inflation wrong? What if there were extraordinary events happening that make it more difficult to get an exact number on inflation? Then we would end up with a wrong productivity number.<p>If we overestimate inflation by 1% then we underestimate productivity by roughly 1% (qualifiers: not exactly, but good enough for this comment).<p>Remember, the inflation estimate is a weighted average of millions of products. A radical swing in one part of the index might have strange results, if the weighting is not exactly correct, or if the weighting relies too much on historical averages which are no longer relevant.<p>All of which is to say, we need to wait a year or two to know if this trend is real. It could just be a statistical illusion.

We are being gaslighted that there&#x27;s an epidemic of quiet quitting when quiet quitting has been defined as &quot;not staying on unpaid overtime&quot;. We&#x27;re being told that remote work is killing America because inner city office rental properties have lost value. In the end however its just a way to manufacture consent for the inevitable layoffs that will soon hit the economy. The Federal Reserve stated explicitly that they will stop inflation by increasing unemployment because there are no other levers left.

Yet people want to either spend extra hours commuting or working to pay expensive rents in crowded stressful cities instead of embracing remote work and actually enjoying life after work hours. Remote work should be an employment right where possible for those of us who know whats up. That way you are less stressed and more productive.

This may be a bit harsh but I feel the need to say it anyway... The posted article is, IMO, completely worthless. It&#x27;s just rambling prose of how she feels bad and about things she considers problems with the world. With a few references to articles that echo her feelings tossed in. It all ends with a request for the world to empathize with her feelings. Not sure how that will help overall productivity or the economy, but I guess it&#x27;ll make her feel better.

I had a bout of post-viral fatigue syndrome after catching &quot;something&quot;[1] back in April. It felt a lot like my previous bouts with depression. It got me wondering if maybe &quot;Long COVID&quot; might be, in at least some part, an existential crisis, realizing that--despite masking, despite social distancing--one has very little control over one&#x27;s own mortality.<p>[1] me: So it&#x27;s not COVID and not the flu?<p>doc: Yeah, there&#x27;s something going around.<p>me: So I just have &quot;something&quot;.<p>doc: Yeah.

The fact that real wages have been stagnant for decades and productivity gains all go upwards could be a factor here.

I imagine that productivity is also about investment? Someone with an EUV fabrication plant has more productivity than a person with a hammer. If we add in that new technologies make people more productive maybe we haven&#x27;t had increases in these in sometime. What productivity increases could self driving cars create?<p>Looking at data I found here <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tradingeconomics.com&#x2F;united-states&#x2F;productivity" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tradingeconomics.com&#x2F;united-states&#x2F;productivity</a> it does not look like there has been a real drop at all, just a jump for the past few years (why is this? initial WFH improvements during the pandemic?) that has dropped back to the same gradual historical increase. I think I&#x27;d like to see more analysis to be sure this is or isn&#x27;t a real trend but I wouldn&#x27;t worry quite yet.

What an embarrassing article, assuming it&#x27;s not a parody. It reads like a caricature of the current female yuppie class:<p>&quot;made me laugh until I cried. Then I put my face in my hands and screamed a little bit.&quot;<p>&quot;we cannot agree that trying to hang the vice president is a bad thing, I am very, very tired of screaming&quot;<p>&quot;People are freaking tired, man&quot;<p>&quot;some of us could make banana bread, but medical and other frontline workers most certainly could not&quot;<p>This is some upper-class woman who has a comfortable life and needs to invent problems to make herself feel alive. The entire article is basically composed of disjointed midwit bromides like the ones I&#x27;ve quoted above.

N of 1, but I know my productivity has fallen, specifically at work. At home and on side projects nothing&#x27;s changed, but I&#x27;ve come to the conclusion that my current job is enough to keep my family afloat, and that&#x27;s all it will ever be. The implicit promise that&#x27;s been around my entire life, particularly with those like myself making top 30% income&#x2F;household by national standards, was that we could afford a decent house with decent schools and raise a family on just our W2 income. My dad provided for all four of us doing the 90s equivalent of my current job, and sure we didn&#x27;t have cable and what vacations we took were all car-based, but my and my sister&#x27;s college was fully paid for, we never wanted for necessities, and we had a 1700 sq ft house in a good school district.<p>Well, that is simply no longer possible on a single income, even a low six-figure one. To get the rewards I&#x27;ve busted my ass for thus far I have to look beyond my job. So unless economic circumstances change, said job is a 40 hour chore to keep the ship afloat while I spin up additional revenue streams. Outside of legitimate customer emergencies it will get all the commitment that my laundry gets (and my laundry is nicely folded). Any request for more better help me buy a house in a good school district or pay for my kids&#x27; college. I want nothing more than what my immediate Gen-X and Boomer co-workers have had for decades, and I&#x27;m sure as hell not going to lower my family&#x27;s standard of living just to increase some middle manager&#x27;s metrics.

&gt; ..we need something, personally or collectively, to acknowledge the complicated and often conflicting experience of surviving a pandemic.<p>&gt; What we don’t need is a bunch of people wondering why we’re being less productive in the workplace as if the answer weren’t right in front of them.<p>Amen to both statements. We don’t need people questioning why isn’t the workforce being more productive - “why are they quiet quitting?” Because you worked your employees to the bone. And you still want more.<p>People are real - they have families. They need to live for something more fulfilling than a job that is always asking for more. We have been systemically deprived of our rights (no more unions, international employees being exploited with no real recourse, medical benefits depending on our jobs).<p>This is a modern form of exploitation of people by companies. Top brass makes disproportionate wealth. Their perks go up every year. Minimum wage gets a paltry increase. Or worse - stays flat.<p>Those in (or seeking) power want us to keep fighting over politics, so we don’t have the time to think for ourselves. No more.<p>Speak up everyone. For yourselves, your friends, your colleagues. Talk about how frustrated you are because your work doesn’t get that your child is sick and needs your attention and love at home. Or that you had a rough breakup. Or that you want to spend your 5 o’clock drinking with buddies, instead of attending a work meeting.

Anecdotal for me, before the pandemic I was working in an open office and there was times that it was not a good environment when you need to focus, working from home work a bit improvement for me and still enjoying it now.<p>My case may be limited to a small group but I&#x27;m sure I’m not alone here. Productivity wasn&#x27;t an issue working from home, I was designing electronics to completely revamp our product range in work. While everything up until this was focused on backwards compatibility, this was a clean slate project and give us chance to explore new tech.<p>Sue to the nature of our systems, there&#x27;s many PCBs involved but the designs were going well and even had a few prototype boards built just before the Electronics shortages hit.<p>For most of the new designs we used the STM32 range as there were a lot available and plenty of options available. They seemed amongst the early ones that went out of stock. After that even just basic components just seemed to have dried up.<p>For almost 2 years now, most of my time has been spent keeping existing systems up and running, finding alternative parts or where that&#x27;s not possible, redesigning boards just to keep production running. Some of these changes have been minor but had to change a Microcontroller on a couple of boards which also requires re-writing firmware for those boards.<p>It’s been a demoralising couple of years and while there&#x27;s a thought that things should get better, there&#x27;s no end in sight yet. When you get to the point that you&#x27;re no longer enjoying the work, that&#x27;s when productivity falls.

&gt; Instead we need to examine actual reality to find out how businesses can help their workers meet reasonable expectations. Blaming it on the millennials or work-from-home advocates or whomever is not the answer.<p>I am an armchair layman with no empirical data, but I think there are two truths.<p>For one, western capitalist societies are in a race to the bottom. Many “leaders”, out of ignorance or being outright sociopaths, care about nothing else except endless, unsustainable growth and optimizing financial metrics.<p>And second, the Information Age worker is realizing that working hard is not enough, getting a degree is not enough, that their labor is being exploited to make someone else rich, while workers can hardly afford housing. White collar? Doesn’t matter either. The “game” has changed.<p>And I think for the longest time, many were convinced that this exploitation was a thing of the past, and this generation has it far better. Suddenly, it’s as if people are realizing 1+1 isn’t 2 unless you’re born rich, incredibly lucky, etc., which for most people is a tough pill to slow.

Cribbing from Eric Weinstein: there are no labor shortages in (reasonably) free markets. There are just supply&#x2F;demand mismatches, especially through the pricing mechanism.<p>Wages in real terms have been stagnant since the early-mid 70s. We probably, generally, need to pay workers more.

People are retiring, work force is smaller, ergo network effects of productivity are smaller.

My theory that I offer without evidence is that large scale fully remote work maintains (may even bump) productivity over the short term, but over the long term, in an economy with high labor mobility job switching in a fully remote environment exacts costs we’re now seeing.<p>Anecdotally as a manager who just started a role at a new company managing 2 teams whose members are mostly remote to different degrees, it’s been very difficult to get a sense of the teams capabilities, mood and load vs the book of work. It’s easy to ask questions and I want to keep everyone engaged, but I also don’t want to micromanage or give the impression of big brother looking over their shoulders.

&gt; the measure of how much output in goods and services an employee can produce in an hour<p>That doesn&#x27;t necessarily need to be related to worker efficiency at all? If we are measuring the output in monetary terms then inflation will bring it down?

Not just tired but &quot;worn out&quot; or &quot;fatigued&quot; from 3 years of the stress of a global pandemic, the worry of an uncertain economy, the worry of a potential world war brewing, and then some have post-covid brain fog and&#x2F;or other post-covid complications.<p>Just as we started to be able to cautiously gather and go out and do things, fuel prices skyrocketed and inflation started ramping up. We all just need a proper vacation.

I gave up working hard when I turned 24 years and my friend passed away due to an alcohol battle.<p>Since then, I realize working long hours; countless hours wasted at night solving and fixing issues isn’t worth the time on earth.<p>Working hard and looking like a 40 year old man when I was 24 years old. I started to see gray hair show.( I’m not exaggerating, I looked like shit) 3 years ago, gray hair was showing.<p>Not worth it being called “ the main man”<p>Not worth it.

I feel like everyone I know has split into one of two groups: The first group is chronically online, perpetually consuming news, and increasingly isolated from the real world. The second group is sick of the constant sky-is-falling sentiment on social media and news media and has increasingly disconnected from their computers and phones.<p>The second group (more disconnected) is <i>much</i> happier on average than the first group (chronically online). The most chronically online people I know have gone through cycles of being convinced that Trump was going to cause nuclear armageddon to believing that COVID was going to kill or debilitate everyone they know, to thinking that economic collapse is imminent and nuclear war is inevitable, and so on and so on. It never ends, and as soon as one crisis fizzles out they&#x27;re on to the next one within weeks.<p>The author of this article clearly fits that description. Here is her description of the pandemic:<p>&gt; During the early days of the pandemic, when we were all locked down and obsessively monitoring our sense of smell, there was nothing else to do but worry and work. Well, some of us could make banana bread, but medical and other frontline workers most certainly could not. And with so many businesses shutting down, the fear of being fired was real. <i>Those who did not lose their jobs worked like hell to keep them; those who lost their jobs and then managed to find new ones did exactly the same thing.</i><p>Anyone paying attention to the job market knows that the COVID closure fears were real, but short-lived. The economy immediately swung in the opposite direction, with hiring sprees everywhere and wages being driven up spectacularly in response to the increased demand. Characterizing that period as &quot;everyone being afraid of losing their jobs&quot; can only be done if you view everything through a heavy filter of cynicism. It&#x27;s like the positives disappear from memory and only the most negative things can persist.<p>That said, this is a real problem. People like to blame Facebook or specific social medias, but honestly websites like Reddit or smaller communities like HN are some of the most persistent in spreading this type of world-is-collapsing narrative. It drains people.

Humanity was faced with an existential crisis that woke them up to realize there is more to life than working to go buy stuff.

Productivity is low compared to the same quarter in 2021. Productivity was higher before the end of enhanced UI benefits because hours worked is the denominator. Just sayin’

We&#x27;re also all doomscrolling, playing games, watching youtube, listening to podcasts or writing to hacker news. No wonder we&#x27;re tired after doing all that! Have people lost the skill to unwind?

&gt;What we don’t need is a bunch of people wondering why we’re being less productive in the workplace as if the answer weren’t right in front of them.<p>Honestly, all of the &#x27;productivity is down&#x27; and &#x27;quiet quitting&#x27; PR spin articles from everyone from Fox to CNN to NPR have made me realize that either the people who have wealth and control media are completely disconnected from my reality, or, are absolute sociopaths.<p>Legitimately, everyone in my life is exhausted. They&#x27;re exhausted by covid, inflation, war, politics, violence, whatever it is. They&#x27;re exhausted. It&#x27;s all too much, and it&#x27;s all running together.<p>I believe we are on the edge of a massive social upheaval. No idea what will happen or what will set it off, but I do believe that.

&gt; Productivity has fallen<p>The alternate, potentially more honest, statement should be that productivity hasn&#x27;t increased at the same rate as it did in the past. I&#x27;m not the only employee who has realized that working harder year after year isn&#x27;t physically or psychologically sustainable, and is rarely (if ever) rewarded.<p>Someone is angry we&#x27;re not working hard enough.

These guys are just asking for the guillotine.

Covid injuries, Long Covid, Covid vaccine injuries, Layoffs, High interest rates, Inflation, Nasty employers; color me surprised.

The US is a sick country. Keep working harder, but for what? Every time I feel like I get a step forward I get knocked back. Leave college into a recession, then get jobs that don&#x27;t pay. Manage to get a software job and get ahead financially, then covid happens, save a ton for a house, then another recession, house prices and rent go up, now interest rates are to high now. Keep working, keep climbing, its not having results.<p>Some kid in Portugal was chatting with me about the US. He said never he&#x27;d never want to come here, to many guns, and we work way to much. Yeah we work our selves to death, in our suburban covered hell.<p>At least everyone I know is sick of work, corporate bull shit, sick of not getting ahead ever, and grinding away on meaningless tasks, we&#x27;re all burned out.

&gt; political divisions so deep that we cannot agree that trying to hang the vice president is a bad thing<p>That kind of rhetoric isn&#x27;t going to <i>reduce</i> political division. The opposite, in fact.