I heard an interesting factoid on one of the political shows on TV the other day. The discussion was on the economy and why it's taking so long for our economy to recover, as measured in improvements in the rate of unemployment.

The statement was made that if our national efficiency was the same today as it was as recently as 1993, there would be no unemployment. Improvements in our national productivity alone has resulted in the elimination of over 15 million jobs since that time.

The point being made, of course, is that the dramatic improvements in economic efficiency by the U.S. has resulted in the under-employment of it's growing workforce.

Like many discussions like this, one can't simply take one statistic and make broad conclusions. As an example, if we were only as efficient as were were in 1993 (as measured in economic output per man hour), unemployment would probably still have occurred, just for a different reason. If we were still only as efficient as we were in 1993, the economic activity and output would simply have shifted to somewhere else in the world where the cost per unit of output was less.

We'd still have unemployment, just for a different reason. I might even argue that an important cause of our current unemployment--our dramatically improving productvity--may actually be a good thing in the long run. Much better than having unemployment or underemployment occur as the result of our economy becoming less productive than other parts of the world.