But is it the case that some hours actually worked simply not reported - especially in white collar occupations? I understand that BLS's "work-horse" - the quarterly census of employment and wages (ES-202) does not collect information on hours worked (just monthly employment and wages) - and that information is collected via various surveys done by state Labor Market Information agencies. I also understand that not all employees may be covered by these surveys e.g. last time I checked MD did not include managerial workers.
The bottom line is that the number of hours worked is an estimate and, given the realities of the US labor market, probably an under-estimate.
>
> The foreign labor input issue is complicated. The BLS told me that
> work done abroad counts as value added abroad, and therefore isn't
> part of the output figure. There may, however, be a problem with
> valuing the labor inputs in purchased components.
As I understand, value added by foreign labor can be factored out in national accounts only as "intermediate consumption" i.e. if the firm purchased it as a semi-finished product or raw material or perhaps a foreign contract. But what happens if, say, an overseas subsidiary of Sweatshops-R-Us makes parts in, say, China, and then ships them to the US-based assembly plant also owned by Sweatshops-R-US where they are assembled into the final product and sold in the US market? I think, but I am not sure, that the only intermediate consumption reported by Sweatshops-R-Us would be price of raw materials purchased overseas and that would feature as value added abroad - whereas the value added by the foreign subsidiary and transferred to the US-based branch would feature as value added in the US. I can ask a colleague of mine who is an expert on national accounts.
As to your comment that productivity increase is just another word for exploitation of labor - not necessarily. It depends how the value added is distributed. If it is used to finance mostly socially useful products - schools, hospitals, transportation, culture, etc. - it is not exploitation at all.
I would go as far as arguing that if that value was distributed in the form of higher wages that are then spent on socially wasteful products - such as inefficient and costly transportation, wasteful land use, grossly overpriced education and health care, various transaction costs (lawyers, realtors, and kindred intermediaries), military adventures or crime prevention measures - this is more exploitative than lower wages and higher profits (perhaps taxed at nearly confiscatory rates) spent on socially useful products.
Wojtek