What Is Labor Productivity?

Labor productivity refers to the ratio of the labor achievements created by a worker within a certain period of time to the corresponding labor consumption. The level of labor productivity can be expressed by the quantity of a certain product produced by the same labor per unit time. The greater the number of products produced in a unit time, the higher the labor productivity. It can also be expressed by the labor time consumed to produce a unit of product. The less labor time required to produce a unit product, the higher the labor productivity.

Labor productivity

The state of labor productivity is determined by the development level of social productivity. Specifically, the level of labor productivity depends mainly on various economic and technological factors in production:

average proficiency of workers. The higher the average proficiency of workers, the higher the labor productivity. The average proficiency of laborers not only refers to the actual technology of labor, but also includes the ability of laborers to accept new production techniques and adapt to new processes.

The degree of development of science and technology. The more developed science and technology, the more commonly its results are applied to production, and the more it can promote the improvement of labor productivity.

The quality of labor organization and production management has a major effect on the level of labor productivity.

Explanation of theory

Labor productivity involves two factors: sectoral labor productivity and sectoral labor allocation structure. Its growth can be broken down into the following three parts. (1)

The improvement of labor productivity has different situations and meanings under different social systems. in

Improving China's labor productivity:

Labor productivity is the core indicator of a country's economic development level and productivity development level. From a historical comparison, reform and opening up have greatly promoted the improvement of China s labor productivity. According to a World Bank report, China s labor productivity in 2011 was eight times that in 1980. Labor productivity has also more than doubled since 1990.

However, the result of the horizontal comparison is that China's labor productivity level is not only decades behind that of developed countries, it is even worse than that of Latin America, India, Thailand, and Morocco. On September 26, Ernst & Young's "Important: Increasing China's Productivity" reported that Chinese companies urgently need to increase productivity to maintain profitable growth. Increasing productivity is vital to China's future economic development. The report states that capital-driven growth is unsustainable, and increasing productivity will be key to unlocking China's economic potential.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences has issued several reports that China's labor productivity is only 1/12 of that of the United States and 1/11 of that of Japan.

The lagging situation of China's labor productivity not only deeply reflects the status quo of China's economic development, that is, the actual level of the quality of China's economic development is far higher than that shown by surface data, there are actually large foam factors, and because of its problems, It has already had a significant impact on China's economic fundamentals. Since the end of 2010, China's sustained slowdown in economic growth has been one of its outstanding characteristics.

The low level of labor productivity may be extremely detrimental to China. It has depleted China s original cheap labor force and prosperous low-value-added industrial production, which has driven down the staged advantages of economic inefficiency and large-scale growth, but no more competitiveness. The labor force and high value-added industries continue to promote economic stability and efficient growth.

In the future, China s population of working-age workers will significantly decrease, and with the rise of China s inflation level, labor prices have continued to rise in recent years. Therefore, China will have to face the dual negative consequences of a decrease in the number of working-age workers and an increase in labor costs. This will cause the economy to hover at a low level for a long time. The key to improving labor productivity depends on labor, that is, the human factor is the key to improving labor productivity.

In the past, the mistakes were: too much emphasis on quantity growth and neglect of quality improvement; excessive use of cheap labor and reliance on government investment to promote economic scale growth and neglect of the cultivation of labor production skills and knowledge levels led to economic prosperity and development on the surface, However, the improvement of labor productivity has not been achieved simultaneously. After all kinds of contradictions and problems have gathered to a critical point, economic development will inevitably encounter difficulties and a slowdown in growth rate. Without effective reforms, the economy will fall into low growth for a long time or even stagnate.

The slowdown of China's economic growth is the result of a combination of factors, but there is no doubt that low labor productivity is one of its core factors. The deep-seated problem behind the phenomenon of China's low labor productivity and the possible adverse consequences is that the Chinese economy has not fully and thoroughly implemented the laws of the market economy, and has shown a structurally distorted pattern under the intervention of power. The prosperous scene of the city is, on the one hand, the bubbles and inefficiency that are hidden under the pile of prosperity, including low labor productivity, high value-added industries that have not become the pillars of the national economy, and the proliferation of expanding government investment.

The free nature of the market economy and the intervention of power are one of the basic contradictions currently facing the Chinese economy. The intervention of power in the economy mainly depends on the comprehensive use of economic instruments led by administrative resources, such as finance, taxation, and financial policies. However, the more vicious form of power intervention is the specific form of government officials directly involved in economic operations through administrative orders Links, such as power bidding, make government bidding behaviors weaker and weaker.

In addition to the lofty convictions for the country and the cause, there are two ways of thinking that lead officials. One is that everything revolves around political achievements and promotes personal development by promoting economic development; the other is that power seeks rent. Achievement thinking determines that they place the economic growth in the first place of local development. They are doing everything possible to introduce projects, attracting investment, trying to gather funds, and increasing investment. In short, they are serving as officials, promoting growth, and opening up personal promotion. Door of convenience.

Under the thinking of political achievements, they will tend to develop short and flat projects, and develop immediate projects, such as real estate, low value-added processing industry, and heavy industries such as chemical industry and coal. These industries all underestimate the improvement of labor productivity and do not attach importance to the improvement of labor skills.At the same time, because officials are too invested in visible projects, education and technology with long-term and strategic value are difficult Gaining a position commensurate with its role, the knowledge and skills of the labor force have not been improved for a long time. Over time, no matter whether it is labor factors, scientific and technological factors, or industrial layout factors, it is impossible to make a positive and effective contribution to improving labor productivity.

Power organizes key links in the operation of the market, and due to insufficient democratic mechanisms, insufficient internal checks and balances, and lack of external supervision factors, it is difficult to be effectively controlled and absolute. Therefore, damage to the market economy, The increase in labor productivity is often fatal. Under the power rent-seeking thinking, important funds that could have been used to develop education and science and technology have been embezzled.

Only through reforms, dedicated to changing the situation of power-led and excessive intervention in the economy, and giving full play to the dominant role of market mechanisms in economic operations, can China's low labor productivity be solved. At the same time, starting from the power generation mechanism, internal checks and balances mechanism, and external supervision mechanism, building a dam for prevention and punishment for its deviance and abuse is also a necessary condition for the reforms mentioned above to be carried out thoroughly. ^[3]