>I wonder if an awareness of the seriousness of the
>situation is behind the
>greater-productivity-via-tech-produces-growth-without-hiring
>spin we're now seeing in the financial press.
The productivity numbers are stunning - so stunning that they're really hard to believe. I don't think they're counting labor inputs accurately (as Roach also argues), and I think the price indexes used to adjust output are also wacky.
But profits are doing nicely.
>Has anyone done work tracking the amount of jobs that
>would have been generated in manufacturing and
>professional services if H1b and other 'guest workers'
>along with offshore outsourcing weren't the rage?
"Guest workers" would be counted as employed if they're in the U.S.
>Perhaps the ability of American capital to now
>outsource nearly the full range of plant and office
>activities to low cost, high skill markets provides a
>more servicable explanation for "jobless recovery"
>than the supposed technology/productivity explosion.
These aren't either/or propositions - it's the technology that makes it possible to outsource.
I had a chat with a productivity dude at BLS the other day, who pointed out that productivity is a value-added concept (like GDP), so if the value addition happens in China or India, then it doesn't appear in the output measure. In other words, outsourcing is mostly a wash in the productivity stats.
Doug