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How Much More Can Downsized Workforce Work?

Businesses are reaching the limits of what they can squeeze out of a downsized workforce. 
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People running corporations today are under intense pressure to try to maintain profit margins at a time of very, very weak consumer demand and also considerable volatility in export demand. 

The classic response under those circumstances is to shed labor because for most enterprises, that’s just a huge part of the costs.  And we’ve seen businesses push for greater efficiency and higher productivity from smaller workforces now since the crisis began in 2007.  

I see no obvious reason why this should stop except that businesses are reaching the limits of what they can squeeze out of a downsized workforce.  That’s the only reason that downsizing would drop out of our vocabulary.  We’ve reached the maximum.  

In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

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