Revisions to the Multifactor Productivity Accounts

This paper highlights revisions to multifactor productivity (MFP) growth and related variables in the business sector and in individual industries, which resulted from the historical revision of the Canadian System of National Accounts (CSNA) released October 1, 2012, revisions to the labour productivity accounts released October 12, 2012, and changes in the estimation of capital input that were made in order to improve its consistency in industry MFP growth estimates.

The multifactor productivity program produces indexes of MFP and related measures (output, capital input, labour input and intermediate inputs) for the business sector, broad economic sub-sectors, and their constituent industries. The MFP program divides growth in labour productivity into its key determinants: capital intensity (changes in capital per hour worked), investment in human capital, and MFP, which includes technological change, organizational innovation and economies of scale.