Monday, November 9, 2009

Civilian Hours vs. Real GDP

In response to my post detailing the decline in the per capita civilian hours worked per week by a member of the population (we need a better name for this), an anonymous reader points out that:

the graphs have basically been declining since 1999
He/she is right. Comparing that ten year period over the historical data series, we do see an unprecedented (going back to available data from 1964) decline. Below is the chart of the rolling ten year change in hours, along with corresponding annualized change in real GDP over the same 10 year time frame.



And we see the hours worked isn't alone... in looking at the data, ten year rolling real GDP growth is at an end of WWII low.

Source: BLS / BEA

2 comments:

  1. What is the source for the real GDP numbers?

    ReplyDelete
  2. BEA (click the BEA next to Source: at the bottom of the post)

    ReplyDelete