Productivity increases when businesses and government invest in new technology to improve output without increasing employees, such as assembly robots in factories and IT software and Hardware such as ATM’s and direct check-out at supermarkets.
Businesses are not making these investments in Delaware or launching a new business mainly because of consistently underperforming public schools. Other reasons include high electric rates, very high corporate taxes, and high personal income taxes.
With job growth concentrated in lower-paying service sector industries, Delaware’s low productivity status is unlikely to change.
(Labor productivity is a measure that represents the amount of goods and services that can be produced relative to the amount of labor service used. Labor productivity measures the rate at which labor is used to produce the output of goods and services, typically expressed as output per hour of labor. Output per employee is a measure that represents the amount of goods or services a person engaged in a particular occupation (job) can produce over an interval of time, such as a year, regardless of the actual number of hours worked.)
