Across the economy as a whole, it is flat, with the Office for National Statistics reporting that output per hour worked was just 1.9 per cent higher by the end of 2022 than in 2019, well below trend growth.
What the hell happened to that 13% increase in production we were promised? It just never materialized. And far from happier, it turns out that people are leaving the workforce at record rates.
In the UK, more than half a million people have decided they no longer want to work, are taking early retirement or claiming benefits.
Finally, more and more companies are insisting that their employees return to the office.
Given that they are all profit-maximizing organizations, with lots of tools to measure output, it’s hard to see why they would do this if the new ways of working are as good for the bottom line as we’ve been told.
The WFH experiment was a failure on an epic scale. It might sound good in theory. It may even have worked in a few small samples, usually focused on a handful of highly motivated freelancers or self-employed professionals who like to work for themselves.
But for most ordinary workers it turned out to be a disaster. Staff lose motivation. They don’t create new ideas. They slack off, new hires never learn the culture of an organization and don’t feel team spirit towards people they only meet in person once or twice a month.
Indeed, probably the only people who have been able to increase their output are the savvy few who have taken on two full-time jobs at WFH, confident that their employers will never know they are only working half-time.
Time to get an apology from the cheerleaders. And we must learn the lesson of his death. Fad theories that involve people working less may sound good in principle.
But the harsh truth is that they always fail – and leave the economy in much worse shape than it once was.