The Bureau of Labor Statistics Hasn't Heard About Automation

While intellectual types are writing all sorts of grand treatises on how automation is going to take all the jobs and leave most people unemployed, the folks at the Bureau of Labor Statistics who actually collect the data haven't gotten the message. They released data today on productivity growth (this is the measure of the rate at which automation is reducing the need for labor) for the 4th quarter of 2016. 

The data showed that productivity grew at a 1.3 percent annual rate in the 4th...