Solving the productivity mystery

Washington

A PARADOX of our time concerns productivity. We are awash in transformative technologies - smartphones, tablets, big data - and yet the growth in labour productivity, which should benefit from all the technology, is dismal. This matters. Productivity is economic lingo for efficiency, and it's the wellspring of higher living standards. If productivity lags, so will wages and incomes.

The latest figures are disheartening. From 2010 to 2015, average labour productivity for the entire economy rose a meagre 0.3 per cent a year. If maintained over a decade, this molasses pace implies a puny 3 per cent wage increase, assuming (perhaps unrealistically) that the gains are spread evenly over the labour force.