This represents a fairly common misunderstanding of "productivity" as used by economists, as in this story. In economics, labor productivity is simply the outpu

This represents a fairly common misunderstanding of "productivity" as used by economists, as in this story. In economics, labor productivity is simply the output per unit of labor. A common metric is revenue per hour worked. How does this fit into the discussion here? If a company earns 10% more in inflation-adjusted currency this year than last year, but headcount has increased < 10%, by definition the staff was more productive this year than last. It's fairly easy for anyone to apply this calculation to the economy as a whole, or to a given subset. Find total revenue in period X and total revenue in a later period Y and the corresponding # of employees, and you can determine whether and how much productivity increased. Objection: "but the minimum wage earners are not more productive, everyone else is driving the productivity gains." You can run the calculation on any low-wage industry you want, you will likely see roughly similar results.