James Manyika

But our labor market system doesn't reward and pay those occupations as much as some of the occupations that are declining.

So those are some of what I, when I talk about the

changes in the structure of our economy in a way that goes a little bit beyond just local incentives is how do we address that?

How do we make sure as those parts of our economy grow, which they will naturally, how do we make sure people are earning enough to live as they work in those occupations?

And by the way, those occupations are many of the ones that

In our current or recent COVID moment or period here, many of where the essential work and workers are, by the way, people we've come to rely on, mostly in those service sector economies that we haven't historically paid well.

Those are real challenges.

Well, first of all, we need productivity to increase.

It's been kind of sluggish in the last several years.

In fact, it's one of the key questions that economists worry about, which is how can we increase the growth of our economic productivity?

It hasn't been doing as well as we'd like it to do.

So we'd like to actually increase it, partly because, as I said,

We needed more than we've done in the last 50 years because of the labor supply pieces declining.

So we actually would like productivity to go up even more.

Mike Spence and I just wrote a paper recently on the hopeful possibility that, in fact, we could see a revival in productivity growth coming out of COVID.

We hope that happens, but it's not assured.

So we need more productivity growth.

And the way you get productivity growth, technology and innovation is a big part of it.

The other part of it is just managerial innovation that happens inside companies and sectors where those companies and sectors figure out ways to organize and do what they do in innovative but highly productive ways.

So it's the combination of technology and those kinds of managerial and other innovations, that's what drives, usually in a competitive context, that's what drives productivity.