Lost productivity: pick a number, any number
From Wonkblog at the Washington Post, a look at all the things that allegedly cost the US $BIGNUM in productivity, eg
– The fact that so many employees aren’t engaged with their jobs costs U.S. employers a staggering $550 billion per year.
– Parents stressed out about child care cost $300 billion per year in lost productivity.
– Cigarette smoking takes $92 billion per year out of the workplace.
– Then throw in insomnia, which costs another $63 billion per year.
– Let’s not forget excessive commuting, which costs employers $90 billion per year.
Adding up all of the losses gives $1.8 trillion per year. That’s about 12% of US GDP or about 2/3 of US federal government tax receipts.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
If childcare were perfect, everyone loved their job to the point of full engagement, no-one smoked, everyone slept well and could complete their commute in a stress-free 10 minutes, I’d be surprised if GDP didn’t go up more than 12%.
11 years ago
I would agree with David Welch about the potential benefits of Utopia being high. But I think the real question is how does the current state compare with actual viable alternatives? In other words, what does the counter-factual (or comparison group) look like?
Let us take just one example: excessive commuting. This problem has several key pieces that are hard to address. We’d all like to reduce excessive commutes for reasons of carbon emissions reduction and sane transportation policy. But there are a lot of moving pieces here that we need to think about. Building regulations may inhibit higher density. Two earner families may end up living in the middle of their two jobs, both of which are further away than desirable. Transportation policy makes the use of highways for routine commutes relatively cheap and often fails to provide equally good alternatives (with known exceptions like New York City).
It would be a tricky business to try and find a new equilibrium and perhaps expensive as well. What do you do with existing exurban housing like the 905 belt in Toronto where alternative employment sources may be scare?
But that is an easy one compared to some of the other options. Precisely how you estimate the smoking productivity costs (as opposed to the dreadful toll on lives) isn’t clear and the linked press release did not have methodology attached. It is fair to say I am skeptical of such claims when the observational study is daunting to do (for all the reasons that comparing exposures between non-randomized participants is fright with peril).
11 years ago