UN says US has most productive labor force:
American workers stay longer in the office, at the factory or on the farm than their counterparts in Europe and most other rich nations, and they produce more per person over the year.
They also get more done per hour than everyone but the Norwegians, according to a U.N. report released Monday, which said the United States “leads the world in labor productivity.”
The average U.S. worker produces $63,885 of wealth per year, more than their counterparts in all other countries, the International Labor Organization said in its report. Ireland comes in second at $55,986, followed by Luxembourg at $55,641, Belgium at $55,235 and France at $54,609.
It must be due to the high unemployment, right?
It must be due to the high unemployment, right?
No, it’s thanks to the undocumented laborers doing those jobs Americans just aren’t willing to do
sarcasm tag didn’t show up…
I’d bet it’s trade policy that’s driving this more than the report is willing to credit… The article notes that…
I don’t think it’s an anomaly that it’s the most protected sector of the economy that has seen a productivity decline.
No catch. It’s unbridled economic growth and fun times ahead.
*Sarcasm on*
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/
http://crookedtimber.org/2007/09/02/foreclosure-and-bankruptcy/
What you are is, you’re not a fun person.
The US worker is forced to stay on the job longer. How else could he deal with all the resources plundered from the world? He’s got to make room for the next shipment of ‘world culture and baby seals’ so they too can be manufactured into something that makes the rich white people richer while the poor get poorer (I got that from J Edwards). it’s all controlled by cheney, bushco, and halliburton.
From the AP article linked above:
In the phony canned interview on NPR’s “Marketplace Morning Report” today, the little news monkey boy somehow forgets what the UN had to say about trade being a factor:
phony cahhed interview here:
http://market*place.publicradio.org/shows/2007/09/03/AM200709031.html
take out the asterisk – the filter doesn’t want to link these people
*canned*
I’d like to know where the productivity of Mexico’s workers fit into this study. Surely it’s a typo that they weren’t #1. Our economy depends on importing their workers, which implies that theirs must be better than ours to start with. Or am I deliberately missing the point here?
And remember we go from some of the poorest educated children in ‘the industrialized world’ to the most productive labor force on the planet. Whenver someone brings up the former, remember the latter… and the most inventive folks on the planet, too. Somehow the lack of a ‘good education’ that meets all multi-culti standards doesn’t seem to stop us, much.
Not to wet blanket or anything – but these figures should be interpreted with some caution. The UN and its member agencies frequently publish summary statistics that are _extremely_ sensitive to slight changes in definition.
While I haven’t gone over the ILO’s tables with a fine-tooth comb, I suspect this is the case here, as well.
Which is not to say that the U.S. economy isn’t extremely productive – look at GDP per capita figures, for example – but just that I would not hang my rhetorical hat on anything provided by the U.N. agencies. If these data were subjected to any serious scrutiny, they wouldn’t even last one news cycle.
BECAUSE OF TEH NUANCE.
Look. Miss Cleo’s back and he linked to an idiot who likes to name himself after some unkempt throwback to the 70’s. That moron writes about how the only way America will survive is that we start living in Soviet-style block housing and dictate our travel plans around train schedules. Wow! That’s so “progressive”. I don’t think he goes far enough. The only way America can gain credibility is to stop using fire and the wheel.
I realize that it was a trick question but… no one makes (well, not really) Americans work longer hours or forces them to be more productive per hour. People want the money. They want the things. Some people can and do chose lifestyle changes that involve fewer hours or jobs that pay less. People chose to homeschool, generally giving up one household income for the privilege. Others chose to simplify their lives, give up a whole lot of stuff that goes with the income and trade it for more time. Not many do, but those who really want to usually can.
And if we lowered taxes people would probably work even more because they’d know that what they earned they’d keep.
From Kunstler:
“The meta-cycle of suburban development, including the “housing” and all its accessories in roads and chain stores, is hitting the wall of peak oil. The suburban build-out is over. This will come as an agonizing surprise to many. The failure to make infinite suburbanization the permanent basis for an economy will rock our society for years to come. Hundreds of thousands of unemployed men with pick-up trucks and panoplies of power tools will feel horribly cheated. I hope they don’t start an extremist political party when the re-po men come to take their trucks away.”
Dude really needs to leave the cul-de-sac once in awhile.
Kunstler again:
To be sure, some manufacturing has gone overseas but the alternative for a lot of these firms was to move or die. Either way, American workers aren’t going to be straining at the levers of the machines. And let’s not forget that a lot of the assembly-line workers are gone because of people like me, controls and automation engineers who replace the workers doing repetitive, injurious and dehumanizing tasks with robots, servo drives, tooling and information systems.
#
Comment by Semanticleo on 9/3 @ 8:07 am #
No catch. It’s unbridled economic growth and fun times ahead.
*Sarcasm on*
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/
http://crookedtimber.org/2007/09/02/foreclosure-and-bankruptcy/
That’s odd?
I only see a ‘buy’ opportunity.
Jeffersonian,
You, sir, are my hero. It’s people like you who free the rest of us to surf the Intertubes all the livelong day.
As US manufacturing decamped to low-labor-cost nations…
Got news for Kunstler. The hands on manufacturing has been declining since 1976. For reasons Jeffersonian mentioned above.
Anything else Semantico?
“I only see a ‘buy’ opportunity.”
Any more like you out there? I mean people with cash?
We just need about a hundred million of ’em.
PT Barnum was right.
As usual, Semiconscious sees nothing but disaster and teh financial apocalypse in our unbridled non collectivist economy.
The consistancy is both heartwarming and laughable. Oh, and thanks for not throwing up the “China will own us in the next ten years” screed.
“heartwarming and laughable”
Not sure you will feel that way when the funhogs come a-knockin’ because they heard about your food and water stores.
The fact that Cleo is looking to a guy who majored in theater for economics soothsaying is…well, I just can’t stop laughing.
Possibly it’s the drama appeal.
Here‘s our friend the theater major, 1 Jan 2006, predicting what that year would bring us:
And there’s more!
I’ll bet he was just great on stage, too.
Let me guess: his stage name was Nostra-clueless
And just in case Miss Cleo of the Economic Armageddon misses your point.
His reportcard: Wrong, Astoundingly Wrong, Not Yet, Way Too Many, Karl Rove Laughs at You, as does Tom Delay and Bill Frist.
Time for a new crystal ball…