Worker Productivity Is at 40-Year Low and Providence Workers Are Among the Worst, Says New Study
Tuesday, February 21, 2023
2022 is the first year since 1983 when there have been three straight quarters of year-over-year drops in average productivity per worker, according to CNBC.
And if overall productivity is down, the workforce in the City of Providence is among the worst in the country, according to a new study.
Out of 116 cities in the United States ranked — Providence ranked as the 7th "least hard-working city."
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTProvidence is ranked 110th.
“Many Americans view hard work as the path to achieving the American Dream. We work so hard, in fact, that we put in more hours at our jobs than several other industrialized countries. The average U.S. worker puts in 1,791 hours per year – 184 hours more than the average in Japan, 294 more than the U.K. and 442 more than Germany. In recent years, many people have switched to working from home, which can end up extending work hours even further,” writes WalletHub.
CNBC reports that employees are working more and producing less, and a time when their financial stress is the highest it has been since 2008.
SEE CITY BY CITY COMPARISON AT BOTTOM OF STORY
Some U.S. cities represent the strong work ethic that helped to build the world’s biggest economy better than others. In order to determine which cities outwork the rest of America, WalletHub compared the 116 largest cities across 11 key metrics.
Their data set ranges from the employment rate to average weekly work hours to the share of workers with multiple jobs.
Productivity Down, Impacting Economic Growth and Increasing Hiring
A separate study released last week by McKinsey Global Institute found that tech hub-driven cities were far more productive than other cities.
"Labor productivity growth1 has been the engine of US economic power and prosperity since World War II, adding 2.2 percent annually to economic growth and contributing mightily to a 1.7 percent annual gain in real incomes. Looking to the future, similar levels of productivity growth would help the country confront looming challenges, including workforce shortages, debt, inflation, and the cost of the energy transition," wrote McKinsey in its report.
"But if the US economy were a car, the engine has been sputtering for a while. In the past 15 years, productivity growth has averaged just 1.4 percent, even as incredible advances in digital technology put a supercomputer in every pocket," the report stated.
The report also notes that eight cities have separated themselves as the nation’s most productive, helping catapult their states up the rankings, too:
- San Jose
- San Francisco
- Seattle
-Houston
- San Diego
- Los Angeles
- New York City
- Boston
MA Far Outpacing RI
McKinsey’s team writes that “the most significant challenges today are insufficient skilled labor supply, uneven technology adoption, and stalling investment.”
Rhode Island is falling far behind Massachusetts.
Annual real output per hour worked from 2007 to 2019 in Massachusetts saw an annual growth rate of 1.6% -- one of the top-performing states in the country. In Rhode Island, the rate was just 0.67% -- less than 50% of Massachusetts.
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