Increased productivity efforts yield few rewards in the knowledge economy

Population aging is reducing access to knowledge workers even as they are becoming more important to economic growth. Thus far, corporations and governments alike have made the intuitive yet untested assumption that working the existing workforce harder and longer can alleviate the economic fallout. This is based on the ‘success’ similar efforts have previously seen in production industries characterized by physical inputs. Our study provides evidence that these successes may not carry over to industries, such as transportation that are reliant on intellectual skill. It is shown that meeting productivity goals by increasing the job demands of knowledge workers, specifically air traffic controllers, compromises the provision of new kinds of value added. Furthermore, it is demonstrated for the first time that increasing job duration exacerbates the effects of job demand on human performance. Coping with staffing shortages by asking that knowledge workers simply ‘do more’ may impede rather than stimulate economic growth.