> The problem is that neither Janet Yellen, Paul Krugman, nor I can make
> this interpretation of Roach's argument work quantitatively.
I'm not sure I follow. Roach's main quantitative point is that the workweek is a lot more than 35.5 hours, especially in the professional and management sectors that make up 35% of the workforce. If I understand Doug's elaborations correctly, this is not an artifact of averaging, but rather results from a set of clearly wrong assumptions, like that computer programmers work 35 hour weeks. That seems not only clearly wrong, but clearly wrong by 50% or more even if you only counted the hours such people are actually in the office, never mind working at home or on the train. Surely there's nothing in principle stopping us from researching this question quantatively? Surveying in more detail how many hours people in the BLA's basket of professions actually work? And seeing if that number's wrong? I don't even see why the work-at-home hours should be beyond the reach of survey estimation.
Michael