By Jacqueline Verrilli
Economics is known as the dismal science. This is because the law of supply and demand suggests that economic profits will always fall to zero in the long run, which sucks for capitalists, and businesses tend to find a way to exploit or create an inefficiency, which sucks for consumers. In keeping with the idea of economics being dismal thematically, I decided to do a back-of-the-envelope estimate of the productivity lost due to the Cubs winning the World Series. Now... rather than put this disclaimer in small print where everybody would neglect to see it or choose to ignore it. I am stating in bold face print here that: THIS AND ALL OTHER BACK-OF-THE-ENVOLOPE ESTIMATES SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS FACTS. IN ORDER TO GENERATE A SCIENTIFIC FACT ABOUT LOST PRODUCTIVTY A REASONABLE SAMPLE OF HEAVILY VETTED DATA WOULD NEED TO BE COLLECTED AND RUN THROUGH A RIGOROUS STATISTICAL PROCEDURE. THIS IS NOT THAT. Great. Now that no one will mistake this for a fact, let's see if I can have some fun with this.
Anecdotal Evidence - Take 1: The Random Walk
It is now 11:00 am and I am sitting in a Starbucks on Fullerton Avenue in Chicago. In the last hour I have seen multitudes of people walking by in Cubs gear, presumably on their way to the officially sanctioned parade and celebration. Many of them looked like they should be at work. So I asked several people who appeared of employable age if they skipped work today. Everybody enthusiastically said "Yes!" Even a woman who was a freelance writer and so was self-employed, thereby, directly hitting her own bottom line more than anyone else's, said she was on her way to the parade. Out of twenty people only one woman who had a toddler in tow hadn't taken the day off work. The City of Chicago has estimated that 4 million people will come downtown today to celebrate the ending of the curse of the goat. If we extrapolate by assuming that 19 out of 20 adults attending the festivities have taken off work, and that 50% of the people who attend are an active part of the labor force (this is a WAG for eliminating children, college students, stay at home parents, etc.), then 1.9 million people attending the festivities are skipping work today.
Anecdotal Evidence - Take 2: Whack-a-mole
At about 10:00 am today, I texted several friends asking if they were going into work today and, if they were, I asked them to do a quick head count and estimate the percentage of people that would normally be there that are not at their desks. I got some wild guesses that ranged from between 30% and 50%. I asked one respondent to yell "Go Cubs!" in her office and see how many heads popped up. She decided to take a walk around instead and said that it appeared to her that people had come in and dropped off their personal items but had then headed out to the parade. Taking a truly wild guess, I would estimate (conservatively) that the workers in the downtown area who attend the festivities would not be at their desks for at least 3 hours today. I am assuming that 100% of people working in the suburbs that are attending are taking the whole day off.
Anecdotal Evidence - Take 3: The Virtual Commuters
One respondent to my mad texting poll said that 5/6 of his team decided to work from home today. In his text to me, however, he felt that his team might be more productive because of it. Since this event is special and would have served as a distraction, I am inclined to agree. The question is whether or not they would be equally productive at home as they would have been on a normal day at work and this is difficult to answer. Studies show that people who attempt to work from home regularly are actually generally less productive on those days. There are also studies, however, that show that, since it takes time to regain concentration, taking time away from one's assigned duties at work in order to attend a meeting can, if fact, make people less productive, so people who stay home today would not have those issues. I would argue, however, that going to meetings at work is production even with the re-focusing time. Lost concentration time is simply a part of the work day and meetings are productive for the overall company if not for the individual employee. So I'm calling people working from home today (and today only) a wash. By the way... the 6th employee...? Yeah, he gone.
Let's Calculate, Shall We?
Okay... So here it is Chicago. Making a crazy, wild guess about the mix of the 1.9 million people lost at least partially from the world's productivity today, let's assume that 500,000 are suburban workers and 1.4 million are downtown workers, and, using an average wage of $50,000, this would bring us to a loss in productivity of about 8.2 million hours of production resulting in over $197 million of lost productivity. Now, I can't begin to calculate the additional revenue the downtown restaurants will have to today or the dollars of additional gear that will be sold today. And, as an officially official economist pointed out, there are ancillary productivity benefits that result from the relationship-building due to shared experiences. But I didn't say I was looking for a net number, did I?
It would have been interesting to see what the corresponding loss might have been if Cleveland had instead won the series. Perhaps this would console some hurt feelings about Cleveland fans' continued struggle for a pennant. Sorry, Ohio. The burden falls to you to drive the economy today. And the economists in Chicago thank you.
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