The economist Paul Krugman once said, “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it’s almost everything”. When workers can produce more value in the same amount of time, economies can grow faster, and living standards can rise.
The chart shows the productivity metric published by the Penn World Table for South Korea and Japan. It measures gross domestic product (GDP) per hour of work.
...read more at ourworldindata.org
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Sadly, both Japan and South Korea are doomed due to demographics.
Depends how much they embrace robots
Demographics are a political thing and can flip in ten years, so I don’t see that as a sure thing long term.
The generational collapse in South Korea and Japan will take more than 10 years to flip. There aren’t enough current kids to change the trajectory that quickly.
It’s more like a 40 year problem because the huge wave of old people needs to clear and a new wave of prime-age workers has to be created.
What I meant by “flip” is that the downward trend in births can turn around fast — but yeah, full replacement can still take decades.
That flip puts a lot of stress on the labor force, since they now have both lots of old people and lots of kids per worker.