California, with a productivity growth rate of +1.7 percent from 2000 to 2017 was the biggest contributor to America’s productivity growth, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The nonpartisan Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as a branch of the of the U.S. Department of Labor has been calculating productivity measures for the U.S. economy since 1884 by measuring labor market activity, working conditions, and price changes in the economy. The BLS has regularly reported that the U.S. productivity annual gains have fallen relentlessly from a +2.7 percent in 1966 to just a +0.5 percent recently.  But in a new study of U.S. state-level productivity study, including state-level output per hour, output, hours, unit labor costs, and after-inflation hourly compensation for the period of 2000-2017, found productivity growth varied from a high of +3.1 percent in North Dakota to a low of −0.7 percent in Louisiana. When accounting for population size and...(Read Full Post)