If you study the U.S. labor market from the Civil War era to present, you discover that we are in a period of unprecedented calm—with comparatively few jobs shifting between occupations—and that is a bad sign, writes Rob Atkinson in the Christian Science Monitor. In fact, this low level of “churn” is a reflection of too little, not too much technological innovation: Lack of disruption is a marker of our historically low productivity growth, which is slowing improvement in people’s living standards.
