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The Dark Side of the Productivity Surge (Sqeezing More Work Out of Employees During Hard Times)
Business Week ^
| 11/6/2009
| Peter Coy
Posted on 11/06/2009 6:07:22 PM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind
Pretty much everyone I know is stressed. Whether they have a job or are out of work, no one is happy. Here in MA, people blame Bush but I think that will be hard to sustain for much longer.
2
posted on
11/06/2009 6:12:53 PM PST
by
ClearCase_guy
(Play the Race Card -- lose the game.)
To: SeekAndFind
OK, so someone tell me why this is different than ANY OTHER business cycle we’ve been through? This isn’t new at all. Productivity rises as the least productive are cut and the ones left work their butts off. Then consumers start buying and businesses eventually have to hire more workers. Same old same old.
3
posted on
11/06/2009 6:16:20 PM PST
by
jdsteel
(CONGRESS: Take it again in twenty ten.)
To: SeekAndFind
More cheerie news...
![](http://market-ticker.denninger.net/uploads/Nov2009/credit.png)
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/
Consumer credit decreased at an annual rate of 6 percent in the third quarter of 2009. Revolving credit decreased at an annual rate of 10 percent, and nonrevolving credit decreased at an annual rate of 3-3/4 percent. In September, consumer credit decreased at an annual rate of 7-1/4 percent.
We are a credit-based system, as are all modern monetary systems. No meaningful economic recovery can or will occur until the consumer has purged his balance sheet of the inappropriate debt he has and is once again able to earn and borrow.
To: ClearCase_guy
I can’t believe I’m 100% nerd.
5
posted on
11/06/2009 6:29:56 PM PST
by
jhw61
To: HangnJudge
And...
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/
The turn upward in this chart was a near-exact correlation with the end of the recession in the early part of the decade. Not only are we dramatically worse now, we haven't even begun to turn, and those who have exited the labor force continues to skyrocket.
The key item here is loan losses. They will not begin to stabilize until year-over-year job loss turns.
To: HangnJudge
And...
To: SeekAndFind
Something that was not in this article are salary people being forced to work many hours overtime for no pay. My wife is a retail manager. She works many 12 hours days for no extra pay. She does not get bonuses. She is paid a flat salary. I don't understand why this is not slavery? The job market does not allow her to move now, but if she could get a different job she would take it. She has been trying to get out of retail for 2 years, but can not. There just are no companies in Pittsburgh willing to interview someone that does not match an exact profile.
8
posted on
11/06/2009 6:40:30 PM PST
by
Plumres
To: SeekAndFind
Having lived through several economic depressions while working in HR in heavy industry, it is my experience that once the necessary layoffs are made, the hard work of reorganizing starts. Better methods, streamlining processes, automation introduced, etc. are all part of it. The company becomes "mean and lean” productivity rises and, hopefully, profits result.
It almost cyclic as companies go through the same process each time the economy tanks. Once the economy improves, production managers begin requisitions for more, and often unnecessary people, costs of production go up and profits slide.
9
posted on
11/06/2009 6:42:29 PM PST
by
elpadre
(AfganistaMr Obama said the goal was to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda" and its allies.)
To: jdsteel
OK, so someone tell me why this is different than ANY OTHER business cycle weve been through?1. debt burden squeezes profit margins, forces "productivity" at the expense of...you name it: quality, customer service, etc.
2. outsourcing. not new to this cycle, but to this generation.
3. the myth factor. not all "productivity" is productivity. For example: you wait on hold for tech support for an hour, because there is simply not enough staff. That's hours that a company doesn't have to pay, that's "the same output with less labor," from their perspective. But what's your hour worth? They've outsourced tech support partly to you. Their productivity at your expense. What a country!
10
posted on
11/06/2009 6:48:23 PM PST
by
the invisib1e hand
("allah akbar" is hate speech. And the Yankees are No. 1.)
To: ClearCase_guy
They may be working me harder, but I’m weaving a complex web of confusion. The trick is to get called back as a consultant at twice the pay on your own schedule. ;-)
11
posted on
11/06/2009 6:56:37 PM PST
by
glorgau
To: the invisib1e hand
Really, details may differ slightly, but my point was that I have read this same headline over and over and over through the years.
12
posted on
11/06/2009 6:58:46 PM PST
by
jdsteel
(CONGRESS: Take it again in twenty ten.)
To: SeekAndFind
The place where I work has cut hours and positions to the point that productivity is now suffering and customers are going elsewhere because of poor service in the most important areas. And guess who was tapped to take up the slack?
To: jdsteel
And the consumers will start buying with... what?
Wages are down. As the above charts indicate, consumers are de-leveraging, ie, they’re not increasing their credit.
So with a downturn in wages, consumers not taking on more credit (and credit being increasingly difficult to come by), what will consumers spend? Quatloos?
14
posted on
11/06/2009 7:18:59 PM PST
by
NVDave
To: SeekAndFind
From beginning of wikipedia article on the Economic Policy Institute mentioned in this article: Jump to: navigation, search The Economic Policy Institute is a US think tank. Economists who founded the nonprofit organization in 1986 included Jeff Faux,[1], Barry Bluestone[2], Robert Kuttner[3], Ray Marshall[4], Robert Reich[5], and Lester Thurow.
Same old marxist trash.
15
posted on
11/06/2009 7:44:58 PM PST
by
dr_who
To: HangnJudge
[Your quoted article]
We are a credit-based system, as are all modern monetary systems. No meaningful economic recovery can or will occur until the consumer has purged his balance sheet of the inappropriate debt he has and is once again able to earn and borrow. Recent articles in Minyanville.com and FinancialSense.com raise these same consumer-credit/consumer-income issues and challenge the idea that the recovery "this time" will actually be a recovery at all in any meaningful sense, rather than an "L-shaped recovery" i.e. stabilization at a permanently lower per-capita GDP, recovery suppressed by job/income/purchasing-power loss.
To: lentulusgracchus
stabilization at a permanently lower per-capita GDP Since most of the GDP "growth" of the last fifteen years consisted of pumped-up consumer goods spending financed by overseas borrowing, no one should be surprised to see this happen.
17
posted on
11/07/2009 4:50:07 AM PST
by
Notary Sojac
("Goldman Sachs" is to "US economy" as "lamprey" is to "lake trout")
To: HangnJudge
It's true that consumer credit has dropped. However I see that as a "bad thing" in the same way that a rapid drop in body temperature from 103 degrees to 99 degrees is a "bad thing".
It's just this generation of Americans finally learning that life lesson about not spending money you don't have.
18
posted on
11/07/2009 4:54:31 AM PST
by
Notary Sojac
("Goldman Sachs" is to "US economy" as "lamprey" is to "lake trout")
To: Notary Sojac
Right, but none of the "playahs" are saying it in public. They're talking "Happy Days Are (Soon) Here Again" and hoping that investors will bail them out by piling back into the stock market so the happy times can continue -- without a fully discounted correction of the Fed's pumped-up market peaks of 2000 and 2007.
Investors and traders don't believe it -- they're staying away in droves, and all the volume that is driving the averages higher since last November, esp. since the March low, is coming from a short-list of stocks being played furiously by back-office black-box operations, many of them fully automated, at a few of the big investment banks, esp. Goldman Sachs. The market is a chimera, a charade.
And it still hasn't corrected properly, and both "it" and everyone watching, knows it.
To: SeekAndFind
Why a few more months of this ‘fear’ of job losses and we just might have an insurgence in seeking ‘union’ protectionism. s/
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