Productivity

US Manufacturing Productivity Is Falling, and It's Cause for Alarm
The U.S. economy has been in a productivity depression for more than a decade, suffering from a historically unprecedented slowdown in labor productivity growth. The issue is finally getting attention, at least among some scholars and think tanks. One widely offered explanation for the slowdown is the shift to services, which has historically seen slower productivity growth than manufacturing.
Read More >>

For a menu of actionable ideas for policymakers related to productivity, see ITIF’s “Tech Policy To-Do List.”

Productivity
Check a box to narrow search for individual content items that cover numerous issues.
August 2, 2021
Fact of the Week: A 10-Point Increase in a Firm’s Share of High-Skilled Workers Correlates With a 2% Productivity Increase for Knowledge-Intensive Services and a 7% Increase for Other Services
If policymakers fail to prioritize investments into STEM-oriented human capital alongside investments in ICT, then productivity growth will stagnate and countries won’t receive the full economic benefits that ICT has to offer.
July 12, 2021
US Manufacturing Productivity Is Falling, and It's Cause for Alarm
The U.S. economy has been in a productivity depression for more than a decade, suffering from a historically unprecedented slowdown in labor productivity growth.
July 12, 2021
Fact of the Week: Intangible Capital Investments Increase Production More Than Twice as Much in Services as in the Product Sector
Germany’s firm-level production findings are emblematic of ongoing transitions of advanced economies becoming driven by information rather than fixed capital.
June 28, 2021
Podcast: The Political Economy of Big Retail, Then and Now—The Story of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, With Marc Levinson
Long before Walmart and Amazon, there was A&P—The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company—which started as a mail-order tea business in the Civil War era before displacing Sears, Roebuck &
June 28, 2021
Fact of the Week: Firms Adopting Digital Technologies Are Nearly 20 Percent More Likely to Implement a Change in Corporate Strategy
Innovations in digital technology lead to innovations in business practices at large.
June 17, 2021
All Automation Is Good Automation
Korea needs to embrace all kinds of automation and leave the decisions of whether it is worker-enhancing or worker-replacing up to companies—and the Korean government should expand, not cut tax incentives for investing in automation.
June 11, 2021
Fact of the Week: A 1 Percent Increase in Low-Skill Wages Increases Automation Patents by More Than 2 Percent Domestically and 4 Percent Abroad
New research by economists at the University of Zurich tests the hypothesis that rising low-skill wage is a driver of automation by examining firm-level data of automation patents.
June 7, 2021
Time for Human-Centered Electro-Mechanical Technology (HCEMT)
In a satirical piece, Rob Atkinson describes the current state of the responsible or “human-centered” AI movement, which rejects the use of AI to automate work.
May 24, 2021
It’s Time to Bring Back Place-Based Policymaking
Between the New Deal era of the 1930s and the late 1970s, it was the formal policy of the federal government to care about and try to reduce regional economic disparities.
May 6, 2021
Korea Has Too Many Small Firms and It’s Hurting Economic Growth
Korea’s progress has slowed over the last 15 years and its productivity performance, while still stronger than that of the U.S. and other global leaders, is slower than it was.

Pages