USA workaholics

[Doug Henwood]

Lawrence wrote:

>I remember an issue of the LBO from the mid-90s in which Doug pointed out
>how much Germany and France had closed the productivity gap with America.
>Germany, in particular, was within the margin of error of the statistics and
>therefore the difference in their numbers and America's was statistically
>insignificant. Does this new report suggest that the long relative decline
>of America's productivity is over, or that the boom has temporarily masked
>the still underlying weakness?

It's pretty certain that while the U.S. strongly outgrew the EU and 
especially Japan, U.S. productivity growth exceeded theirs, since 
productivity is in large part cyclical. But most other countries 
don't use the very flattering technique of measuring real output that 
the U.S. does, so comparisons are very difficult across countries. I 
don't know how the BLS handled it, but the European Central Bank and 
the Bundesbank have argued that if you use similar techniques, the 
gap between U.S. and EU growth rates (and productivity growth) 
shrinks considerably. And, recent revisions to U.S. productivity 
stats show the late 1990s to be much less miraculous than was thought 
at first. So, I'd guess that U.S. productivity growth was stronger 
than the other two metropoles in the late 1990s, but not by the 
margin the offical numbers say.

Doug