Nous le répétons souvent, l’emploi est un indicateur très en retard, il ne préfigure rien de ce qui va se passer dans l’économie, il est « lagging ».

Mais là n’est pas le plus important; la bonne performance apparente de l’emploi américain ne présage rien de bon en termes fondamentaux,  car si l’emploi progresse de façon étonnante, c’est au détriment de la productivité. Or la productivité, c’est ce qui conditionne la croissance, la vraie, à long terme. L’économie américaine, nous avons pu le constater nous même s’enfonce dans la sous productivité et les emplois « bidons ». Tout se passe comme si le Système faisait de la répartition.

Ce texte de Caroline Baum discute de ces questions. L’accent mis sur l’épuisement de la vague de gains de productivité produits par la high tech est intéressant.

 LISEZ

The U.S. economic expansion turns 6 1/2 years old this month, making it one of the longest on record. It is also the weakest expansion of the post-World War II era.

The labor market was slow to recover from the Great Recession, but once it did, employment has shown solid, uninterrupted growth since October 2010. In fact, job growth has been so consistently strong since then that the average monthly increase in nonfarm payrolls of 203,000 seems out of step with an economy limping along at an average 2.1% pace.

The sharp decline in the unemployment rate from a peak of 10% in October 2009 to 5% in October of this year  is easier to explain.  Given the anemic growth in the labor force — 0.2% since the recession ended compared with an historical average of 1.5% — it doesn’t require that many new jobs to bring the unemployment rate down.

Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen expressed confidence that the U.S. economy will continue to grow modestly, in a sign she is ready to raise short-term interest rates later this month.

The rest of the economy has had its ebbs and flows, featuring two quarterly declines in gross domestic product growth in the first quarters of both 2011 and 2014, something of an anomaly during an expansion. The explanations ranged from weather to residual seasonality to a West Coast port strike in the case of 2014.

Through it all, job growth has stayed strong. What can explain the inconsistency? The only answer that makes any sense is not an uplifting one. Solid job growth is a reflection of lousy productivity growth.

“It’s hard to fight the arithmetic,” says Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan. “Output growth equals productivity growth plus growth in hours worked. With the workweek basically stable, hours worked equates to growth in employment.”

So, employers have to hire more paper-pushers because they can’t figure out a way to produce more with less, which is what productivity is all about? It’s depressing just to think about it.

Perhaps a more detailed explanation is in order. The typical pattern following a recession is for hiring to lag as employers wait to be convinced that the pickup in demand is for real. Businesses have plenty of spare capacity, so they can increase output without hiring new workers. The result is a surge in productivity.

The post-recession cyclical spurt ended in 2010. Since then, nonfarm business productivity has been growing at a sub-1% rate. Businesses rehired people who had lost their jobs during the recession.

They had lots of capital and capacity, so when demand picked up they didn’t need to invest. Compared with previous business cycles, capital spending has been disappointing.

And the benefits of existing technology have been realized, according to John Fernald, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, whose research focuses on productivity.

“The ability of businesses to improve what they are doing because of information technology has been slow or is tapped out,” Fernald says. The “enormous reorganization” of industry around IT is pretty much over. The last few years have witnessed “ongoing incremental improvement and slow innovation,” he says.

In other words, businesses await the next “New New Thing” to catapult them back to the 1990s, at least in terms of productivity growth.

They may have a significant wait. Some economists, Fernald included, think that the late 1990s spurt in productivity growth of 3% was an outlier; that the slowdown in productivity from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s is a better reflection of today’s trend.

Other economists reject that assessment, claiming the productivity slump, which preceded the Great Recession, is a simple case of mispricing. If the Bureau of Labor Statistics isn’t capturing the quality improvement in IT when it adjusts prices for the consumer price index, inflation is being overstated and real GDP is being understated, they argue. The implication, based on Feroli’s equation, is that productivity growth is being understated as well.

In the late 1990s, IT created greater efficiencies in the way firms conduct business: everything from improved inventory management to instant communication across the globe.

Today’s IT seems more focused on consumption, not capital, goods. The benefits to consumers, and to the economy, are harder to quantify. I have serious doubts about both.

Why? Walk down Main St. USA, and almost everyone is walking — even driving! — with head bent forward, eyes focused on an electronic device, fingers engaged in texting. Today’s technology may be cool. I’m certain it’s addictive. But as for productivity-enhancing, I’d say it’s a distraction that does more harm than good.