US – Workers are hostage to the weakest aspects of the business environment say Harvard Business School’s professors

For America to remain competitive, businesses need to develop a coordinated strategy to lift living standards for the average American worker.

So concludes the newly issued annual report from the US Competitiveness Project at Harvard Business School, or HBS. The topic of this year’s survey: “An Economy Doing Half Its Job.” The project is chaired by HBS professors Michael E. Porter and Jan W. Rivkin.

While many mid-size and large firms have rebounded from the recession, working-class citizens and small businesses are struggling, the survey found. The result is a “a troubling divergence in the US economy,” Porter and Rivkin said. For the country to remain competitive, prosperity needs to be broadly shared.

According to Rivkin, businesses are beneficiaries of the nation’s greatest strengths. Those include vibrant capital markets and the research coming out of universities. Workers, in contrast, are hostage to the weakest aspects of the US business environment — weaknesses such as polarized politics and struggling education systems and poor efforts to improve workplace skills.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at Harvard Business School survey finds a ‘troubling divergence in the US economy’ – Business – The Boston Globe.