Huh?
Worker productivity of the last twenty years is up way above worker pay. In addition, one of the reasons there is an unemployment problem in the first place is because worker productivity is up so much that employers have been able to get by without adding new workers because they can squeeze current ones they have for all their worth.
Don't believe me? Here's the Kaplan Test Prep Post on that:
When workers become more efficient, it's normally a good thing. But lately, it has acted as a powerful brake on job creation. And the question of whether the recent surge in productivity has run its course is the key to whether job growth is finally poised to take off.
One of the great surprises of the economic downturn that began 27 months ago is this: Businesses are producing only 3 percent fewer goods and services than they were at the end of 2007, yet Americans are working nearly 10 percent fewer hours because of a mix of layoffs and cutbacks in the workweek.
That means high-level gains in productivity -- which in the long run is the key to a higher standard of living but in the short run contributes to sky-high unemployment. So long as employers can squeeze dramatically higher output from every worker, they won't need to hire again despite the growing economy.
...
the question of what caused the burst in workers' efficiency is one of the great unanswered questions of the expansion and has huge stakes for the economy over the coming year.
"It is an episode that we're going to -- we, economists in general -- are going to want to understand better and look at for a long time," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said at a hearing last week in which he described the productivity gains as "extraordinary" and acknowledged he had not foreseen them.
Businesses have certainly not been investing in new equipment that might enable workers to be more efficient -- capital expenditures plummeted during the recession and are rebounding slowly. And the structural shifts occurring in the economy are so profound that one would expect productivity to be lower, rather than higher, as people need new training to work in parts of the economy that are growing, such as exports and the clean-energy sector.
So what's happening? As best as anyone can guess, the crisis that began in 2007 and deepened in 2008 caused both businesses and workers to panic. Companies cut even more staff than the decrease in demand for their products would warrant. They were hoarding cash, fearful that they wouldn't have access to capital down the road.
When demand for their products leveled off in the middle of last year, the companies could have stopped cutting jobs or even hired people back. But they didn't -- payrolls have continued declining.
Instead companies squeezed more work out of remaining employees, accounting for a 3.8 percent boost in worker productivity in 2009, the best in seven years. Which raises the question: Why couldn't companies have achieved those gains back when the economy was in better shape? The answer to that may lie on the other side of the equation -- employees.
Workers were in a panic of their own in 2009. Fearful of losing their jobs, people seem to have become more willing to stretch themselves to the limit to get more done in any given hour of work. And they have been tolerant of furloughs and cutbacks in hours, which in better times would drive them to find a new employer. This has given companies the leeway to cut back without the fear of losing valuable employees for good.
So tell me, Mr. Hess, how does making American workers more productive than they already are solve unemployment when part of the problem is productivity?
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