We see computers everywhere except in the productivity statistics, economist Robert Solow once said. Indeed, while the internet age has given us mobile phones, cloud computing, Skype, and social media, economic productivity in the world’s richest countries has been dismal. From 2014 to 2018, the US government’s official labor productivity measure grew by just 1% per year on average.
But this productivity paradox might soon change, in large part because of Covid-19.
As travel bans and social distancing have forced big companies to shift to working from home en masse, video conferences and messaging platforms are substituting for almost all face-to-face communication to keep operations running smoothly.
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