Another prominent economist, Harvard’s Lawrence Summers, has objected that this story is incompatible with a second recent trend, namely declining employment of men aged 25-54. If productivity has fallen temporarily because everyone is hard at work at the twenty-first-century equivalent of reorganizing the factory floor, then the employment rate should be going up, not down, as firms continue to operate their old “steam-powered machinery” at the same time they are adding new “electrical capacity.”
另一位著名经济学家，哈佛大学的劳伦斯·萨默斯（Lawrence Summers）则对此表示反对，认为这个故事和另一个最新趋势——25-54岁的男性就业率下降——无法匹配。如果生产率是因为每个人都在努力重组21世纪的工厂车间而暂时下降，那么就业率应该上升而非下降，因为企业继续运行自身旧“蒸汽机”的同时也在增加新的“电动机”。因此中青年男性就业应当不降反升。