You did not justify one of your stated premise, “with labor productivity growth slowing down.” Yes, I know what economic productivity means. I understand better than your explanation in the article.

Since you clearly make the case that we have no really good measures of labor productivity how can you state “With labor productivity growth slowing down.” You don’t even state the interval of the slow down, past year, past decade, past two decades.

We have seen a huge shift in labor hours from areas where labor productivity was easier to measure like manufacturing to areas where it is harder to measure like services.

Actually it would not be surprising for labor productivity to not only not grow as fast but to even decrease after such a long expansion of the economy and low unemployment. Workers have less fear of losing their jobs so the don’t have to work as hard and newer workers might naturally be less productive as they are less experienced and just learning the ropes.

While automation should increase labor productivity, the much touted and feared automation of all our jobs seemed to be a “chicken little” exercise.

One more thing to think about. If you increase your productivity and are not rewarded for that increased productivity you will decrease your efforts to increase your productivity and look to other ways to increase your rewards.

TEK