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In a column on bloomberg.com, Noah Smith notes that people who work at a computer have many ways to slack off or waste time—posting to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram; watching YouTube videos; or playing video games—that weren't available to workers in previous decades. He calculates that:"The average working American spends about 34.4 hours on the job. If we assume that's five days a week, it means that one hour of slacking per day means that true work hours are really only 85.5 percent of the official number."Source: Noah Smith, "Goofing Off at Work Masks Rising Productivity," bloomberg.com, May 10, 2017.If Smith's estimates are correct, is the rate of growth of labor productivity as measured by government statistics overstated or understated? Briefly explain.A.Overstated, because regardless of the amount of output produced per hour, workers are not producing efficiently.B.Understated, assuming that workers are producing the output in fewer hours than the official work hours.C.Understated, because the amount of physical capital is not increasing at a fast enough pace to keep workers busy.D.Overstated, because workers could be using that hour of slacking each day to engage in some other activity.
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