Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Not yielding or producing.
- adjective Not engaged in the direct production of goods.
- noun A person who produces no useful work.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Lacking the power of producing; not fertile.
- Unproductive financially; not yielding revenue; unprofitable, as a mine or a farm.
- In political economics, not causing or tending to cause an increase in the quantity or quality of things of value; not causing commodities to possess exchangeable value: as, non-productive labor.
- noun A person or industry that does not cause an increase in the quantity, quality, or exchangeable value of commodities.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective not directly productive.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Not
productive .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective not directly productive
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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IHS Global Insight economist Brian Bethune calls it the gold trap: Investors are parking their funds in nonproductive assets like gold that undermine the Fed 's efforts to simulate activity.
Fed Kelly Evans 2010
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And if they are focusing on things that are nonproductive, which is what they're doing now, then, you know, Madeleine is somewhere.
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"We're hoping to encourage changes in roadside management practices, how public lands are managed and how people are managing what they would call nonproductive land or marginal land that they might own."
TreeHugger 2010
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These have not had measurable success in the past and do not address the complexities of the present problem: a shrinking and inadequately educated workforce, coupled with a rapidly growing "nonproductive" older population, a persistent and intractable high school dropout rate, and the skyrocketing cost of higher education.
Bernard Starr: How Seniors can save American Education and the Economy Bernard Starr 2010
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These have not had measurable success in the past and do not address the complexities of the present problem: a shrinking and inadequately educated workforce, coupled with a rapidly growing "nonproductive" older population, a persistent and intractable high school dropout rate, and the skyrocketing cost of higher education.
Bernard Starr: How Seniors can save American Education and the Economy Bernard Starr 2010
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These have not had measurable success in the past and do not address the complexities of the present problem: a shrinking and inadequately educated workforce, coupled with a rapidly growing "nonproductive" older population, a persistent and intractable high school dropout rate, and the skyrocketing cost of higher education.
Bernard Starr: How Seniors can save American Education and the Economy Bernard Starr 2010
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These have not had measurable success in the past and do not address the complexities of the present problem: a shrinking and inadequately educated workforce, coupled with a rapidly growing "nonproductive" older population, a persistent and intractable high school dropout rate, and the skyrocketing cost of higher education.
Bernard Starr: How Seniors can save American Education and the Economy Bernard Starr 2010
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These have not had measurable success in the past and do not address the complexities of the present problem: a shrinking and inadequately educated workforce, coupled with a rapidly growing "nonproductive" older population, a persistent and intractable high school dropout rate, and the skyrocketing cost of higher education.
Bernard Starr: How Seniors can save American Education and the Economy Bernard Starr 2010
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But as long as the selection of "nonproductive" employees is performance-based, we avoid major morale hits.
Tom Doctoroff: China vs. Japan: Two Cultures, Two Responses to Crisis 2009
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The Kremlin also spent less and less on its "nonproductive" health system, which was one reason for a remarkable trend revealed by Western demographers: in the 1970s the Soviet Union became the first industrialized country in the world to experience rising infant mortality and declining life expectancy.
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