[bensonn]

“Blue” territories have seen their productivity climb from $118,000 per worker in 2008 to $139,000 in 2018. Republican-district productivity, by contrast, remains stuck at about $110,000.

How is productivity measured? I have wondered about this stat as I have seen it used many times over the years but I can't figure out what and how they are measuring or who is doing the measuring.

Take Weyerhaeuser as an example- they own 26 million acres of land across North America, have 10,000 employees and 7+ billion in revenue. Recently their corporate headquarters moved to Seattle. Is their 7 billion in revenue spread across all the loggers, drivers and mill workers in remote forest locations? Boeing is another example with headquarters in Chicago but as far as I know they don't make any planes in Chicago.

Are these stats pulled from census, irs, labor...? Am I wrong or cynical in thinking these are lazy stats and most of the "productivity" is attributed to the small percentage of employees in the corporate HQs? I can't imagine a fed bean-counter following around logging trucks in remote areas to make sure the productivity is attributed to the correct region.

[beefman]

Productivity is measured by dividing GDP by total hours worked, with the assumptions that GDP is caused by work and that the relationship is linear. The latter assumption is false and the former is highly suspect.

You raise a good question about localization of GDP. The global economy is a highly-connected network. It's often unclear how to draw valid conclusions from national accounts, let alone the local accounting attempted here.

That said, I think there most likely is a trend of the kind imagined by the authors and that it's showing up in these figures. Showing up is the most it's doing though.