Why U.S. workers keep getting more productive

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

For the last couple of years, U.S. labor productivity has been on the rise. And economists don't know exactly why. So today on the show, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago plays economic detective and helps us investigate some different theories about why U.S. workers seem to be more productive than in prior decades.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:02.0	This is the indicator from Planet Money.
0:13.4	I'm Adrienne Ma.
0:14.6	And I'm Whalen Wong.
0:16.0	It is Jobs Friday.
0:18.5	We've got the latest numbers in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In May,
0:22.2	the economy added 139,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.2%. If you're a
0:30.0	faithful indicator listener, you know that we like to look at the BLS's what they call the
0:34.5	employment situation report every month, because it's a snapshot of how
0:38.3	everyday people are doing in the economy. But there are other ways that the BLS measures how
0:44.2	working people are doing. And that is what we're looking at today, a data series that gets
0:49.4	one economist particularly excited. It's the greatest unsung series that if you say, what should we be watching, that's what you should be watching.
0:59.2	I would recognize that economist voice anywhere.
1:01.9	Oh, yes.
1:02.6	Welcome back to the chat.
1:04.1	Austin Goolsby, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
1:08.3	Yes, he is back.
1:10.1	And this unsung data series he's obsessed with is
1:12.6	labor productivity growth. It's a measure of worker output. For the last couple of years,
1:18.5	this number, for the most part, has been increasing in a significant way. And the thing is,
1:23.6	economists don't know exactly why.
1:32.9	So today on the show, Austin Goolsby takes us on an economic mystery hunt of sorts.
	...

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