Production

Productivity Growth

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US Manufacturing

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US Manufacturing

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Cartoon: Phones and Productivity

Cartoon: Productivity

Cartoon: Sports and Workplace Productivity

Manufacturing Productivity

great chart from Carpe Diem

Over 4 times increase in output, due to productivity gains.

NAFTA: Charts

Despite all of the political rhetoric about NAFTA, free trade and globalization causing U.S. job losses in manufacturing, one of the most significant factors in the recent decline of American manufacturing jobs is the significant increase in productivity of U.S. workers. Manufacturing output and productivity in the U.S. are both at all-time highs - we're able to produce more and more output with fewer and fewer workers.

Although some manufacturing jobs are gone forever, we're much better off as a country to be able to get increases in manufactruing output with fewer workers, just like the productivity gains in agriculture that eliminated millions of farming jobs. In the long run, we are much better off with fewer jobs in the farming sector producing an increasing amount of agricultural output, and likewise, we'll be better off in the long run with fewer workers in the manufacturing sector producing an increasing amount of output.

Mark Perry at Carpe Diem

Free trade is good. Productivity growth is good. Clinging to the past bad.

U.S. Workers: World's Most Productive

The average U.S. worker produces $63,885 of wealth per year, more than their counterparts in all other countries, the International Labor Organization said in its report. Ireland comes in second at $55,986, followed by Luxembourg at $55,641, Belgium at $55,235 and France at $54,609…

The U.S., according to the report, also beats all 27 nations in the European Union, Japan and Switzerland in the amount of wealth created per hour of work - a second key measure of productivity…

Norway, which is not an EU member, generates the most output per working hour, $37.99, a figure inflated by the country's billions of dollars in oil exports and high prices for goods at home. The U.S. is second at $35.63, about a half dollar ahead of third-place France…

…a Chinese industrial worker produces $12,642 worth of output - almost eight times more than in 1980 - a laborer in the farm and fisheries sector contributes a paltry $910 to gross domestic product…

The difference is much less pronounced in the United States, where a manufacturing employee produced an unprecedented $104,606 of value in 2005. An American farm laborer, meanwhile, created $52,585 worth of output, down 10 percent from seven years ago, when U.S. agricultural productivity peaked.

read the entire story