In total, then, there are 21.4 million employees in the U.S. workforce — 12.5 million managers and the equivalent of 8.9 million individual contributors, who, through no fault of their own, are creating little or no economic value. This means the U.S. could achieve current levels of economic output with 15% fewer people in the labor force. That would, in effect, boost GDP per worker from $120,000 to $141,000.