John McCain's talking about how American workers are the "most productive in the world." It's true that American workers produce the most, but that's because we work longer hours. By contrast, "measured as value added per hour worked, American workers dropped behind those in Norway where workers produced $37.99 per hour, compared to $35.63 in the United States and $35.08 in France."
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"The Most Productive in the World"
09 Oct 2007 05:36 pm
Comments (25)
That's all well and good, but I think nearly any economist would still consider the US among the top, if not the top, in productivity. Norway is a special case, given its huge natural resource sector. France has much higher unemployment (i.e., their least productive workers don't hurt their productivity per hour).
Interestingly, if you rerank by regions, I feel quite confident in saying that the Northeast US is by far the world's most productive, per hour or otherwise.
More appropriately, why isn't the median salary within driving distance of $71,260 ($35.63 times 2000 hours)?
Subtract financial returns to the owners of capital. Subtract transfers (which are income, but not salary). You're within driving distance.
You mean increased work hours produces diminishing returns? I'm shocked.
Strike my comment about income.
I think nearly any economist would still consider the US among the top, if not the top, in productivity.
Well, I don't know, millions of these amazingly productive US people seem to find ample time to post on blogs and message boards all day long.
Interestingly, if you rerank by regions, I feel quite confident in saying that the Northeast US is by far the world's most productive, per hour or otherwise.
Well, if you rerank the UK by region, I think Greater London wouldn't do too badly either, don't you think. This doesn't have all that much to do with "productivity" (from personal observation I can say that most aren't killing themselves working) as with the amount of opportunity for making lots of money, which is much higher for structural and historical reasons.
They ought to be more productive per hour, considering how well rested they are.
The relevant question is, who produces more in the first our of work?
This is only answerable if you use micro-level data to control for length of the working day.
Raise minimum wage enough and make firing people impossible and only the most productive people will be hired -- the rest will be on welfare. Then limit the amount of hours the employed are allowed to work. Sure drives up productivity.
Yes, it's easy for a country with vast natural resource wealth relative to the size of its population (Norway) or with high structural unemployment (France) to produce high GDP per hour of work. The United States is exceptional in combining a sustained high GDP per hour of work with low unemployment and a higher total number of hours worked.
1) HAH
2) Mr. Sailer has a point; we work a lot less than you, and a smaller proportion work full time. So it only makes sense that our per-hour productivity is higher.
3) I believe the offshore sector is excluded from that number (although that is just a guess) - it usually is, otherwise the number would be completely misleading, and I imagine much much higher than 38.
That, or we are just genetically superior to the rest of the world.
They ought to be more productive per hour, considering how well rested they are.
Posted by Steve Sailer
This is both funny and insightful. I was expecting Steve to type something more along the lines of
They ought to be more productive per hour, considering how blond they are.
But he didn't and I apologise.
Re: Mr. Sailer has a point; we work a lot less than you, and a smaller proportion work full time. So it only makes sense that our per-hour productivity is higher.
I fail to see the logic there. Productivity figures are already normed to (or rather: defined by) output per unit of time.
This discussion suffers from a conflation of productivity with individual achievement -
a few quotes from the report:
Higher labor productivity is generally the result of greater investments in employee training and skills, equipment, and technology, the report said.
Hundreds of millions of women and men are working hard and long, but without the conditions they need to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.
Norway has a population of 4.7M people (at least that's what Wikipedia tells me). About the size of Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco counties combined. Care to put it toe-to-toe with them on a per unit basis?
Scientific studies have proven that the drop in American labor productivity relative to Norway has been caused by blog commenting.
Sorry.
JonF:
First, if you work 60 hours a week, it's likely that your per-hour productivity is lower than if you work 37,5 hours a week - As Mr. Sailer said, simply because you're more rested.
Second, a smaller proportion of people work in Norway - because of generous benefits for the slightly disabled and whatnot; thus many of those who presumably would be least productive don't work at all, and does not figure in the statistics.
Novakant makes a good point too. Labor is much more expensive here than in the US (our minimum wage is 17-18 USD with today's exchange rate), so it makes sense that much of our economy consists of capital-intensive rather than labor-intensive jobs.
"Norway has a population of 4.7M people (at least that's what Wikipedia tells me). About the size of Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco counties combined. Care to put it toe-to-toe with them on a per unit basis?"
Posted by DM
Why? In case you haven't noticed, Norway is not a megalopolis. It's a complete country, with cities, towns, villages, etc.
OH NO, FRANCE'S UNEMPLOYMENT RATE IS OUT OF CONTROL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The French unemployment rate is too high to be optimal, but the depth of the problem is overhyped. The greater problem is that university educated French Arabs have a high unemployment rate, but French Arabs overall are a small portion of the population. People talk about France's economy in the US like it's Zimbabwe or something.
Why? In case you haven't noticed, Norway is not a megalopolis. It's a complete country, with cities, towns, villages, etc.
Yes, but its small population and vastly disproportionate natural resource wealth allow it to occupy a prosperous niche position in the global economy that is not available to larger nations.
Of course, that also makes it more vulnerable. Norway's oil and gas windfall isn't going to last forever, and unless it diversifies its economy it could be in for a rough future. I wonder what its productivity will be 20 or 30 years from now.
Mixner,
We'll be living off interest. Unlike most countries that rely on natural resources, we have a pretty well functioning political system. The government has invested budget surpluses abroad in a fund that is well over 100% of GDP, and with the oil prices skyrocketing it is growing exponentially. Not that the transition will be problem-free, of course, but "rough future" is overstating the problem.
Mixner,
We'll be living off interest. Unlike most countries that rely on natural resources, we have a pretty well functioning political system. The government has invested budget surpluses abroad in a fund that is well over 100% of GDP, and with the oil prices skyrocketing it is growing exponentially. Not that the transition will be problem-free, of course, but "rough future" is overstating the problem.
Mixner,
We'll be living off interest. Unlike most countries that rely on natural resources, we have a pretty well functioning political system. The government has invested budget surpluses abroad in a fund that is well over 100% of GDP, and with the oil prices skyrocketing it is growing exponentially. Not that the transition will be problem-free, of course, but "rough future" is overstating the problem.
"Norway",
Oil and gas provide about 25% of Norway's GDP. It's going to need a fund vastly bigger than 100% of GDP to replace that with interest.
Comments closed October 23, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Is that the "excluding oil" productivity of Norway?
Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | October 9, 2007 5:43 PM