Thursday 16 November 2017

Does more hours mean less productivity?

The ONS is really motoring on its productivity releases.  Here's one from April 2017 (home page).

1. the upper panel shows before the Great Recesion many countries lay in a corridor where hours growth was quite compatable with productivity growth.

2. the lower panel shows that after the GR this seems to have broken down: that the same hours growth is associated with much less productivity growth. That in turn suggests a big fall in TFP growth, and the lastest TFP growth is set out by Bart van Ark and Kirsten Jäger in: 
Recent Trends in Europe's Output and Productivity Growth Performance at the Sector Level, 2002-2015.



Hours and GDP growth vary across countries