zlacker

Where are you seeing the US is a laggard in hour by hour productivity? The US is the best large country at this, coming in at #6 or #13 depending on the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_labour_pr...

>>bobthe+(OP)
Hm, that's measuring everyone against the same dollar; Americans are productive by this measure because everything is expensive. I wonder if there are other benchmarks for productivity, adjusted for local market basket.

>>jazzyj+u3
The source claims that the figures are measured in the "international dollar", which is adjusted for purchasing power in different countries.

>>jazzyj+u3
The numbers are in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) USD so they already measure how many goods in the local market basket can be bought per working hour (on average, as these GDP numbers don’t account for income or wealth distribution).

>>tobero+R4
For healthcare it might be getting to the point where the numbers are nearly incomparable. PPP seems like it'd be more inappropriate than usual for measuring a particular industry. US healthcare is known to be quirky.

Although there doesn't seem to be any obvious evidence here that the US could be lagging behind. Per-person the US is still a bit of a productivity outlier to the upside. When they aren't legislatively restrained they tend to work hard and in an organised way.

>>bobthe+(OP)
I guess that's measured off the entire GDP, divided by the whole working population? I would imagine most of US's GDP comes from services and finance, not manufacturing.

Also if the US makes very expensive widgets, but can't make cars cheaply, it would still show up as high worker productivity. It's not really the same as engineering efficiency per (PPP) dollar.