Costing presenteeism

Here's Fats Domino capturing the mood of the nation:

Blue Monday how I hate Blue Monday
Got to work like a slave all day

The problem isn't just that we've got to work. It's that we've got to travel to work, to show our faces. It's not sufficiently appreciated just how expensive this is. Let's do the sums for London alone:
Cost of travel = £1040pa (3-zone annual Travelcard)
Cost of time = £6900pa (based on an hourly one-way journey 5 days a week for 46 weeks, with time costing £15 an hour.)
Cost of office space = £2700pa (assuming each workers takes 90 square feet of space, with rent at £30 per square foot.)
This gives a cost per worker of £10640. With 1.1m workers commuting into London, this gives a cost of £11.7bn a year. In 2004, London's GDP was £165bn (pdf). Assuming a 10% rise since then, this means the cost of getting to work is 6.4% of GDP.
Of course, you can quibble with the figures endlessly. But I think I've been conservative about the amount of space we use, and about the value of our time. And I've omitted the costs of lost productivity caused by the stress of commuting, or from being distracted by our colleagues.
This  £11.7bn is a cost that's incurred before we've done a hand's turn (I'm ignoring work done whilst commuting). It is the deadweight cost of presenteeism.
And why do we need to be in the office? For some, there are of course pressing technical reasons why they need face-time.
For others, though, presenteeism is not technically necessary, but merely  a strategy of capitalist domination, as Stephen Marglin  showed in these classic papers. And this strategy imposes big costs.

Comments

[james higham]

Thanks for these figures - people over here are always asking me about costs in Britain but I'm not up to date. Now Chris, it's not a Blue Monday - it's a wonderful Monday, as I post every Monday. Think of the adventure - the possibilities this week!

[dsquared]

time taken in non-market labour like travelling to work is not part of GDP? to add insult to injury, it is counted as "leisure".

[Tim Worstall]

The solution of course is to opt out of the corporate structure and go freelance and work from home.

As I do. Errr, Smash the Corporatist State! by, umm, working from home?

Although I would add one point. When you do work from home you find you need more space there than you would otherwise. So the cost of the office space in town needs to be offset by the greater area needed at home (where it is much cheaper of course).

[angry economist]

Are their costs of lost productivity or time when working at home? e.g. doing chores when you are supposed to be working,watching daytime TV, tidying up your office because you can't concentrate until its just right etc; writing on the blogs all day 'cos no-one is watching etc?

[AntiCitizenOne]

Angry,

It all depends if you're actually doing anything productive IN the office when you get there.

P.S. I'm an Ex wage Slave for 3 Months now. Excellent decision.

[Matthew]

6.4% of GDP is quite a lot, but isn't it more startling that it is 34% of the commuter's salary, and somewhat more if you did it post-tax. I suppose this is obvious if you note that two hours travelling is 1/4 of the working day.

Then again I think the time spent travelling is not always a complete loss. If you can just sit there fore an hour you can get things done that you might have to set aside time for anyway, such as reading the paper or filling in your taxes. So it probably overstates it a bit, depending on mode of transport etc.

[dearieme]

This just demonstrates that London isn't really liveable unless you can afford a helicopter.

[Noosa Lee]

They call it Stormy Monday but Tuesday's just as bad.