Why is technology not making us more productive?

 


We are often told that we are in the midst of a technological revolution.


That business and the world of work continue to be transformed and improved by computers, the internet, the increased speed of communication, data processing, robotics, and now - artificial intelligence.


There is only one small problem with all this - none of it seems to show up in the economic data. If all this technology really is making us all work faster and better, there is precious little evidence.


Between 1974 and 2008 the UK's productivity - the amount of output you get per worker - grew at an annual rate of 2.3%. But between 2008 and 2020 the rate of productivity growth collapsed to around 0.5% per annum.


And in the first three months of this year, UK productivity was actually down 0.6% on a year earlier.


It is a similar picture in most other Western nations. In the US, productivity growth between 1995 and 2005 was 3.1%, but it then fell to 1.4% from 2005 to 2019.

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