Our long-running, drastic reduction in productivity hours

Take a look at this chart; I got it from here:

Here’s the basic way to read that: a 40-hour/week worker in 1950 (far left of the chart) is essentially equivalent to an 11-hour/week worker in 2015. Phrased in a more logical way, it takes an average person about 11 hours/week to do what a post-WW2 worker took a full work week to do. This shouldn’t necessarily surprise anyone: just off the advent of Microsoft Office and Google, you’d assume the work week would have to reduce (easier to present information, easier to share information, easier to find information). E-mail is a massive waste of time, but it has made things more effective, especially in terms of quickly and cost-effectively communicating with people in other offices/countries.

So: what does all this mean?

Reduction of Productivity Hours Since 1975

Before we start, let’s vet this a second: the data is from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Now take a look at this: it’s from the same site, and it’s a reduction of productivity hours since 1975 (that’s vaguely when unions started becoming less…