In this glorious 3rd quarter of the year, something rather amazing has happened. Overall, companies reported that "worker productivity" was up by 9.5% while actual hours worked was down 5%. This means exactly what you think it means. Mostly it means that there is no reason for companies to do any hiring. Why? Because they are doing just fine without you.
Unit labor costs, for those of you who are not economists, are pretty much what they sound like: the cost of an employee, divided by the value of a worker's output. This quarter, unit labor costs were down 5.2%. This is terrific news for companies, and the stock market was well up today on the news-and with anticipation for tomorrow's official release of October's unemployment numbers. The forecast is for 175,000 more jobs lost in October. Unemployment will be at a 26-year high! And yet it will be "good news," because it beats the direst predictions (as well as September's numbers). This means, it turns out, more productivity!
Why would this be happening, you are perhaps wailing! This would be happening because corporations of all industries and all sizes have realized that in times of massive unemployment, workers will do anything at all-for instance, the labors of one or two of their laid-off former coworkers-so as not to be cast out into a market where there are no jobs. Hey, you there! You, whining about your (admittedly quite terrible) workday: the only answer for you is to leap off the cliff and quit your job before it quits you. Just go on and quit the market before it wrings your neck.
Leaner and meaner.
Fire People. Make the others afraid of losing their jobs. They will work harder to keep the job they have.
Everyone wins/loses!
The really sad part about this is that the jobs that have been cut, aren't coming back.
If you work in television at you are on the production side, look for your job to be replaced by automation. Especially in news.
Robotic cameras, desktop editing, back-pack "journalists", centralized master-control, etc, etc.
Some of this is for the good. But all of it translates to positions being eliminated, permanently.
The even sadder part is that higher productivity means less comments on the awl.
First they came for the typesetters, and I did not speak outâ€"because I was not a typesetter;
Then they came for the photo editors, and I did not speak outâ€"because I was not a photo editor;
Then they came for the printers, and I did not speak outâ€"because I was not a printer;
Then they came for the assistant designers, and I did not speak outâ€"because I was not a assistant designer;
Then they came for the art directorsâ€"and there was no one left to speak out for me...
Well done sir.
I am trying to do my part by being as unproductive as possible.
If you shoot one horse, don't the rest of the horses run faster?
I think they just scatter and whinny and generally freak-the-fuck-out.
Depends on if/how the rest of the horses are tethered to the dead one.
What if the horses have internet?
You're in a David Lynch film.
It's worth saying that unemployment claims doesn't mean more people are getting unemployed -- even when the economy's great, some businesses fire people because they just can't make money, and others hire people: we've all been there. A 'normal' number for unemployment claims in a month is about 400k -- so usually, anything smaller than that, and you'll have more people coming OFF unemployment because they've got jobs as getting ON it because they lost jobs.
"The worse the worse".
Plz direct me to the nearest cliff.
Wow, Theories of Surplus Value. You don't see that every day. I bought my copy in a used bookstore in Key West of all places. (Well, just 2 of the 3 volumes. Can't remember where I got the 3rd.) Doncha love the way he makes fun of "the tedious Say"?
A lot of the reported productivity increase will just be a statistical artifact. It is the least productive workers that usually get the chop in a downturn and their removal from the average productivity stats itself pushes the average up irrespective of what happens to the productivity of still employed workers.
And Pinkpundit, Jean Baptiste Say > Karl Marx