Labor Productivity

Making stuff, moving stuff...that’s the stuff of life...and labor productivity.

Imagine all the workers in the U.S. working, right now. Now imagine all the little bits of value they're contributing together toward GDP in, let’s say, the timespan of an hour. That’s how economists measure labor productivity.

Labor productivity is measuring the amount of real GDP everyone in a country is making in a given hour. Things like investment, technology, and human capital all increase labor productivity and GDP.

To measure labor productivity, economists don’t track literally by the hour, every hour. Rather, they take total output and divide it by total labor hours, in a given timespan.

Now get back to work...there’s GDP to contribute to. And wait for the robots to come and change...everything.