> Ted Byfield mentioned longer hours as the secret of the productivity
> miracle. Technically, the productivity measure is output per hour
> worked, so longer hours shouldn't affect the calculation. But the
> hours worked figures are based on what employers report to BLS
> surveyors. An item from Business Week quoted by Sam Smith in today's
> Progressive Review suggests that hours may be seriously underreported:
>
> >Throughout the economy, the speedup is well under way. The 40-hour
> >week has all but disappeared: Americans now log 260 more hours a
> >year than they did a decade ago. Pharmacists and government <...>
only 5 hrs/week more? maybe, but only by some pretty tendentious measures; if one redefined those measures such that they gauged not more-time-working but less-time-not-not-working, the results would be quite different. for example, someone who holds down 2 jobs loses a lot of time to commuting. sole proprietors, entre- preneurs, partnerships, etc. have been a huge area of growth: do these people really work only 5 more hours than they would have a decade ago? and, in general, the demise of organized labor in the last decades has surely dealt a staggering blow to the idea of overtime pay--in which case, there's less incentive to report longer hours accurately.
cheers, t