Did you know the video game industry is worth more than $300 billion dollars a year, bigger than movies and music combined?

Marketplace Morning Reports' Skin in the Game series explores what this booming industry can teach us about the economy and jobs.

Listen to Skin in the Game, and more from Marketplace Morning Report, wherever you get your podcasts.

Are you one of those people who checks off everything on their daily to-do list?

Well, increasingly, American workers are those kinds of people.

From American public media, this is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles, I'm Kai.

Rizdal, it is Thursday.

Today, August 3rd, good as always, to have you along.

Everybody, our lead story today comes in the form of a formula.

It is widgets produced per hour worked.

That is almost literally how the labor department comes up with its quarterly report on worker productivity in this economy said report landed this morning.

And in fact, we were all a little bit more productive in the second quarter than we were in the first.

3.7% more productive at an annual rate, should you be curious.

And as Marketplace is just in whole reports to get us going here at the top of the show,

both key components of that formula,

how much stuff we're making and how long it has taken us to do it,

are moving in the right direction.

The labor department says worker output rose in the second quarter.

That's in large part because economic growth has been picking up.

Not only work consumers spending, businesses were investing,

but you also saw a rebound in the middle or east.

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