The New Economic Order: Now with More Meetings and Less Productivity

The global economy has evolved. Not into something faster, leaner, or smarter, but into something more calendar-dependent. Productivity is down, GDP is wobbling, and inflation is doing interpretive dance, yet the only thing truly booming is the number of meetings.

According to Bloomberg, the average corporate employee now spends 18 hours a week in scheduled meetings. That is almost half the workweek dedicated to discussing the work that will never actually get done. The BBC found that 31 percent of workers admit to doing other tasks during video calls, including laundry, online shopping, and quiet existential reflection.

Economists once feared automation would eliminate jobs. Instead, it has created a world where everyone is employed full-time in attending progress updates about projects that have not progressed.

As The Guardian dryly put it, “Capitalism has entered its group-chat phase.”

The Rise of the Meeting-Industrial Complex

Somewhere between globalization and the Great Resignation, meetings became a status symbol. The Wall Street Journal reports that executives now measure importance not by salary or authority but by calendar density. The busiest person wins, even if nothing happens.

In the old economy, value was created through production. In the new one, it is created through screen time. A manager with four meetings before lunch is a hero of modern commerce, bravely battling connectivity issues and PowerPoint fatigue in the name of synergy.

Bloomberg data show that corporate meeting frequency has grown by 250 percent since 2020. Hybrid work made it worse. What was once a one-hour in-person update is now five back-to-back video calls with identical slide decks and slightly different attendees.

Consulting firms have, of course, monetized the crisis. McKinsey recently introduced “Meeting Efficiency Audits,” promising to streamline corporate communication. The average engagement costs $250,000 and concludes with a report recommending fewer meetings followed by a meeting to discuss the report.

In Silicon Valley, productivity startups are multiplying faster than calendar invites. Each claims to reduce meeting bloat through better scheduling algorithms, AI transcription tools, or color-coded emotional tracking. The irony, as The Economist observed, is that “the tools designed to fix meetings require meetings to implement.”

Meanwhile, executives are embracing the chaos. One London CEO told Reuters, “I have no idea what my company makes anymore, but I know we’re very aligned about it.”

The Productivity Mirage

GDP growth may be slowing, but corporate activity has never been louder. Buzzwords echo across time zones: alignment, synergy, innovation. Every sentence must end with “let’s circle back.”

The BBC reported that productivity per hour in the OECD has dropped by 6 percent since 2019, even as working hours have increased. Economists call it the “efficiency paradox.” Employees are busier than ever, but the output could fit on a sticky note.

A Harvard Business Review study found that most managers confuse visibility with performance. As long as someone’s camera is on during a meeting, they are considered productive. It has turned the workforce into a global theater troupe, acting out engagement for fear of being muted out of relevance.

The Guardian recently interviewed an employee who described his typical day as “twelve hours of pretending to care, one hour of real work, and thirty minutes of wondering what happened to ambition.”

Even artificial intelligence has joined the corporate play. Companies are now using chatbots to attend meetings on behalf of employees, summarizing discussions and generating follow-up emails filled with action points no one will follow up on. One tech startup in California now sells “digital proxies” that simulate your presence and even nod occasionally on camera. The product’s slogan: Be everywhere, mentally nowhere.

Economists argue that this performative busyness is draining global productivity. Bloomberg calculated that unnecessary meetings cost the global economy over $2 trillion annually, roughly the GDP of Canada. That means if everyone canceled half their meetings, the planet could theoretically fund universal basic income and still have time for lunch.

The Global Economy as a Group Chat

Governments have noticed the trend and, predictably, joined in. The G7 Summit in Tokyo this year lasted three days and produced twelve communiqués, eleven press conferences, and one decision postponed until the next summit. The IMF now hosts “collaborative foresight sessions” to discuss how to discuss the future of growth.

According to Reuters, international economic meetings have tripled in frequency since 2020, while policy implementation timelines have doubled. The global economy, it seems, now moves at the speed of an Outlook reminder.

The United Nations recently launched an initiative called “Global Productivity Forum,” a conference designed to improve international efficiency. The Guardian noted that it required four planning sessions, three preparatory committees, and a working lunch on “meeting optimization.”

Corporate culture has gone fully bureaucratic. Instead of progress, we now have updates. Instead of leadership, we have shared slides. Entire industries exist to facilitate coordination among people who are not producing anything.

Bloomberg described this new paradigm as “a market where ideas are infinite but execution is perennially pending.” In this environment, economic growth depends less on innovation and more on how well teams can align their Google Calendars.

Even the labor market reflects this shift. LinkedIn reports a surge in job titles like “Chief Alignment Officer” and “Head of Cross-Functional Communication.” These positions promise collaboration and deliver clutter. One recent posting offered “competitive pay, flexible hours, and an endless sense of mild panic.”

The Economics of Pretending to Work

At its core, the modern economy is no longer driven by production but by participation. Productivity has been replaced by presence. The only KPI that matters is how quickly you can say “You’re on mute” without sighing.

The Wall Street Journal reported that workers now attend an average of 70 percent more internal meetings than they did five years ago, while measurable output has stagnated. Yet companies continue to expand management layers, each with its own meeting rituals. It is economic theater disguised as collaboration.

Technology has not helped. AI can summarize discussions, automate emails, and generate to-do lists that no human will read. The digital revolution promised liberation from bureaucracy, yet somehow turned everyone into middle management.

Even economists are caught in the loop. The IMF recently released a 120-page report on declining productivity that contained six appendices of meeting transcripts from the task force that wrote it. The conclusion: “Further discussion is needed.”

The Guardian summed it up best: “We are not in a productivity crisis. We are in a coordination crisis.”

Conclusion

The new economic order is not defined by innovation, automation, or global trade. It is defined by meetings. They have become the universal language of modern capitalism, a ritual of reassurance that progress is happening somewhere, just not here.

Bloomberg analysts predict that by 2030, half of the world’s white-collar work will involve coordinating with others who are also coordinating. The global economy will resemble an endless video call where everyone is slightly blurry and no one knows who is leading.

Perhaps this is the ultimate irony of the information age: we created technology to save time and then used that time to schedule more meetings about how to save time.

As one anonymous executive confessed to The Guardian, “I don’t know if we’re changing the world, but I know we’re very busy talking about it.”

The future of work is here. It is punctual, well-dressed, and stuck in another meeting.