In a column on bloomberg.com, Noah Smith noted that people who work at a computer have many ways to slack off or waste time—posting to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram; watching YouTube videos; or playing video games—that weren’t available to workers in previous decades. Smith calculated that “the average working American spends about 34.4 hours on the job. If we assume that’s five days a week, it means that one hour of slacking per day means that true work hours are really only 85.5 percent of the official number.”
a. If Smith’s estimates are correct, is the rate of growth of labor productivity as measured by government statistics overstated or understated? Briefly explain.
b. What are the implications of your answer in part (a) for using increases in real GDP per capita, as calculated by the BEA, to measure increases in well-being?