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Has Productivity Increased During The Pandemic?

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 For the last 45 years, I have worked in the consulting business helping businesses and organizations improve their productivity and profitability through effective implementation of recommendations.  I am a Certified Productivity Specialist and a Master Productivity Specialist as well, through the Association of Productivity Specialists (a-p-s.org),  As a result of this experience, I believe I have a very good knowledge on productivity issues across a broad range of industries .

I was recently reading an article from Bloomberg.com (formerly Business Week Magazine) that suggested that Covid has boosted productivity.  I have also seen articles saying the exact opposite.  So what is it?

I have no doubt that productivity has increased over the pandemic.  Productivity is defined as output per hour of work.  Another way to define it is "what the worker gave you (output) over what you gave the worker (pay). The basis for this is people are:

        1) more relaxed and perhaps creative working from home

                   Would this increase productivity?  Typically yes  

                   2) there are less interruptions, less wandering around and less water-cooler type conversations, 

                    Would this increase productivity?  Unequivocally yes

                   3)  companies laid off their most junior and in experienced workers,

                    Would this increase productivity?  Typically yes

                    4)  they have less traffic problems and transportation issues etc. 

                     Would this increase productivity?  Yes

                     5) for those essential workers who were also still working at their normal place of business     where the sickness of others caused them to work additional hours and do more with less,                    

                       Would this increase productivity?  Probably yes

So all and all, productivity did go up for these and other reasons. But our economy nevertheless stagnated. There are over 10 million fewer jobs in the USA.  So while individual productivity probably did increase, the overall economy's productivity went down because there was less produced and less spent,  As people slowly return to the office, the reasons listed above in 1-5 will disappear, and unfortunately productivity will go down before going up.   

Best,

Bob  5/25/2021 


 

  

  

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