Enjoy the day; you earned it

It’s only appropriate that millions of Americans are getting the day off today — Labor Day — because Americans are, still, among the hardest working people in the world.

A United Nations report released today shows that Americans work longer hours than workers in other developed nations and, on average, produce more per person than anyone. The average U.S. worker produces $63,885 of wealth per year. Ireland is second at $55,986, followed by Luxembourg, $55,641; Belgium, $55,235, and France, $54,609.

The productivity figure is computed by dividing the country’s gross domestic product by the number of people employed.

While these are encouraging figures for the nation at large, they can hide the fact that within the United States there are industries that face difficult times, and those difficult times will impact the lives of the employees in those industries.

No area knows that better than the Mahoning Valley, where auto and auto parts, steel and steel pipe manufacturers face special challenges from imports and unfair trade practices.

Productivity shift

Much of the United States’ high average productivity is attributable to profits from information and communication technologies, not from the industrial output that was the basis for U.S. economic supremacy in the second half of the 20th century.

The inescapable conclusion is that today, 125 years after the first Labor Day parade, American workers are seeing some of the best of times and some of the worst of times.

While average productivity numbers are encouraging, the strength of this nation has been its middle class. And the survival of the middles class will depend on better education,, the protection of U.S. intellectual property from international pirates and a national resolve to continue to dominate the high-technology sectors that preserve prosperity.