25 October 2013 (15:17 UTC-07 Tango)/20 Dhu’l-Hijja 1434/03 Aban 1391/21 Ren-Xu (9th month) 4711

Despite the fact that people in the U.S. have decent access to computers and the internet, they actually score lower in intelligence than even countries who lack access to technology!

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released the results of their comparison of average workers in a couple dozen countries, including the United States.  U.S. workers lose!

The average U.S. worker earned a “Mean proficiency in literacy” score of 262.  Only France, Spain, Italy and Cyprus scored lower.  Surprisingly German workers scored only 267.1.  The average score is 270. Russian workers scored 275.2.  Not surprisingly, Japanese workers are way ahead of the pack with a high score of 293.6 (but their high technical intelligence still doesn’t make them much money).

Those scores include people in the age range of 16 to 65 years.  When OECD cut the age range to just 16 to 24 years, U.S. workers scored even lower, dropping to 260.9, meaning the older U.S. workers are smarter than the young workers.

This contrasts with most other countries, who saw a jump in their literacy score when the older workers were left out of the equation.   This is not good for the United States, because it suggests that as more older workers retire, or are refused jobs because of their age (like me), the overall global competitiveness of U.S. workers will continue to fall in the coming decades.

When it comes to the “adjusted” math (numeracy) score the U.S. worker does worse.  Only Cyprus and Italy scored lower than the U.S.  And it gets even worse when you throw out the old fogies: U.S. workers aged 16 to 24 suck with the lowest score of 240!  Even the young workers of Cyprus beat the U.S. in math!

The OECD also gave the U.S. poor IT and problem solving scores, but my dumb ‘merican brain couldn’t take it anymore (I is college edumacated, yes I is, Idaho State Uni).  Check it out for yourself: OECD Skills Outlook 2013.