In a paper on trends in the consumption of leisure of Americans, Mark Aguiar of the Boston Fed and Erik Hurst of the UC Business School have discovered that people in the US in the last 40 years have gained many hours of leisure time.
The research shows people have now 4-5 extra hours of leisure per week versus 1965, which translates in 5-10 weeks per year based on a 40 hour week. I bet nobody would feel they have gained any down time if you asked working professionals all over the US.
Interestingly, the International Labour Organisation still supports the supremacy of output per worker in the US as well as their leadership in worked hours versus other industrialised economies.
The ILO report, entitled Key Indicators of the Labour Market (V Edition), indicates that the U.S. still leads the world by far in labour productivity per person employed in 2006 despite a rapid increase of productivity in East Asia where workers now produce twice as much as they did 10 years ago.
What’s more, the report also shows that the productivity gap between the US and most other developed economies continued to widen. The acceleration of productivity growth in the US has outpaced that of many other developed economies: With US$ 63,885 of value added per person employed in 2006, the United States was followed at a considerable distance by Ireland (US$ 55,986), Luxembourg (US$ 55,641), Belgium (US$ 55,235) and France (US$ 54,609).
However, Americans work more hours per year than workers in most other developed economies. This is why, measured as value added per hour worked, Norway has the highest labour productivity level (US$ 37.99), followed by the United States (US$ 35.63) and France (US$ 35.08).
Increase in productivity is mainly the result of firms better combining capital, labour and technology. A lack of investment in people (training and skills) as well as equipment and technology can lead to an underutilization of the labour potential in the world.
In East Asia where productivity levels showed the fastest increase, doubling in ten years, output per worker was up from one-eighth in 1996 to one-fifth of the level found in the industrialized countries in 2006. Meanwhile, in South-East Asia & the Pacific productivity levels were seven times less and in South Asia eight times less than in the industrialized countries, the report reveals.
In the Middle East and Latin America & the Caribbean, the value added per person employed is nearly three times less than it is in the developed economies; in Central & South Eastern Europe (non-EU) & CIS the level is 3.5 times less, and four times less in North Africa. The widest gap is observed in sub-Saharan Africa where the productivity level per person employed is one-twelfth of that of a worker in the industrialized countries.
Tags: consumption, ILO, leisure
