American employers are getting one heck of a deal. The Labor Department reported today that worker productivity in 1999 was the best in seven years. For less money is not so clear. David Wyss is chief economist at Standard and Poor's. But employers are being forced more and more to get more work out of fewer people because they've got to compete in the world economy and that's getting more and more difficult to do.
Technology now allows many companies to replace people with computers, saving time and money.
Global competition is prompting managers to squeeze more out of their workers per day. Not just in high-tech, but in everything else. It's no accident that productivity is zooming just when equipment spending is at its highest share of GDP in history. That's the biggest jump since 1992. And in the last 3 months of last year productivity rose at a five percent annual rate.