15 ms·

The good people at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics are aware of this fact which is why their measurements are price adjusted. I always wonder whether people w

The good people at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics are aware of this fact which is why their measurements are price adjusted. I always wonder whether people who make these comments think the people over there haven't taken a stats 101 class. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/prod2.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/prod2.nr0.htm

tqi 4y ago
They definitely make adjustments and I'm sure they are very smart, but given that the productivity and inflation charts change trajectory at about the same time, I think the it's reasonable to suspect it's a measurement artifact rather than everyone reaching a breaking point all at once?
- dismantlethesun 4y ago
  Why can’t two economic measures correlate without having A cause B via “measurement artifacts”?
fundad 4y ago
unit labor costs take consumer prices into account but not the productivity number. Productivity is output divided by hours worked and there is no price adjustment described for the output number unless I missed something in that link. Businesses may also be more staffed up than the same quarter a year ago. Productivity is up over last quarter but down compared to the same quarter a year ago, when businesses were complaining about being understaffed (the enhanced unemployment ended in September of Q3 2021). Did the delta outbreak also depress hours worked and juice the health sector's contributions to GDP or hurt it because there are more profitable procedures? All I can say is output is not adjusted for prices.
treis 4y ago
>Output is measured primarily as an index of product revenues, adjusted for price changes https://www.bls.gov/k12/productivity-101/content/how-is-productivity-measured/output.htm#:~:text=For%20industries%2C%20BLS%20uses%20annual,annual%20and%20quarterly%20productivity%20measures https://www.bls.gov/k12/productivity-101/content/how-is-prod... Adjusted for price changes being the key word. The BLS isn't measuring the number of pipes plumbed. They're counting the dollars that plumbers make and using that number to determine their output. To compare that output across time you have to discount for inflation. If you calculate too high a rate of inflation then you discount too much

tqi 4y ago

They definitely make adjustments and I'm sure they are very smart, but given that the productivity and inflation charts change trajectory at about the same time, I think the it's reasonable to suspect it's a measurement artifact rather than everyone reaching a breaking point all at once?

dismantlethesun 4y ago
Why can’t two economic measures correlate without having A cause B via “measurement artifacts”?

fundad 4y ago

unit labor costs take consumer prices into account but not the productivity number. Productivity is output divided by hours worked and there is no price adjustment described for the output number unless I missed something in that link. Businesses may also be more staffed up than the same quarter a year ago. Productivity is up over last quarter but down compared to the same quarter a year ago, when businesses were complaining about being understaffed (the enhanced unemployment ended in September of Q3 2021). Did the delta outbreak also depress hours worked and juice the health sector's contributions to GDP or hurt it because there are more profitable procedures? All I can say is output is not adjusted for prices.

treis 4y ago

>Output is measured primarily as an index of product revenues, adjusted for price changes https://www.bls.gov/k12/productivity-101/content/how-is-productivity-measured/output.htm#:~:text=For%20industries%2C%20BLS%20uses%20annual,annual%20and%20quarterly%20productivity%20measures https://www.bls.gov/k12/productivity-101/content/how-is-prod... Adjusted for price changes being the key word. The BLS isn't measuring the number of pipes plumbed. They're counting the dollars that plumbers make and using that number to determine their output. To compare that output across time you have to discount for inflation. If you calculate too high a rate of inflation then you discount too much