Labour productivity

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All (54) (0 to 10 of 54 results)

  • Articles and reports: 36-28-0001202301200006
    Description: Canada and the United States share a deep economic relationship that contributes to most measures of their economic performances having a tight common trend over the long term. However, a notable exception is the increasing disparity in labour productivity growth between the two nations. This article summarizes recent research by Statistics Canada, focusing on the information and cultural services industry and how its competitive intensity relative to the United States has influenced the Canada-U.S. labour productivity growth gap since 2001.
    Release date: 2023-12-21

  • Articles and reports: 36-28-0001202300400004
    Description: The COVID-19 pandemic affected the Canadian economy in numerous ways, one of which was changing the relationship between growth in production, and changes in real consumption and real gross fixed capital formation (GFCF). Typically, real consumption and real GFCF are expected to progress similarly to real gross domestic product (GDP), however during the period covered by the COVID-19 pandemic, real consumption and real GFCF grew at a stronger pace than real GDP. This article illustrates how examining real income rather than real production can address this paradox. Specifically, the roles of changes in production (the use of capital, labour and multifactor productivity used to produce real GDP) and changes in non-production sources of real income growth (the trading gain and net income from abroad) are examined.
    Release date: 2023-05-08

  • Articles and reports: 36-28-0001202201000002
    Description:

    Rising wages and prices have characterized 2021 and 2022. Soaring unit labour costs have raised competitiveness concerns. This article examines the relationship between real wages and productivity to see whether real wage growth (growth in real total compensation per hour worked) has lagged behind labour productivity growth in recent years. It examines whether the result is sensitive to differences in the definition of real wages.

    Release date: 2022-10-27

  • Articles and reports: 36-28-0001202200500002
    Description:

    The COVID-19 Pandemic has been affecting Canadians’ daily lives since the second quarter of 2020. Production and employment were cut back largely at the beginning in order to slow the spread of this contagious disease, leading to a sharp decline in income and a rise in the unemployment rate. GDP per capita of a country is often used for assessing the standard of living and its cross-country comparisons. Since 2020, Canada’s per capita GDP has averaged -1.3% per year, down from its long-term annual average of 1.2% from 1981 to 2019 and from 1.0% per year from 2010 to 2019. For a better understanding of the sources of Canada’s per capita GDP growth, this article decomposes GDP per capita into labour productivity, work intensity, employment rate, participation rate, and the share of working population. The contributions of these 5 ratios to Canada’s per capita GDP growth are examined.

    Release date: 2022-05-25

  • Articles and reports: 11F0019M2021007
    Description:

    An increase in the economic participation of women has been identified as a major driver of economic growth, leading to increased interest in supporting the entrepreneurial activities of women. This paper uses newly developed data on the gender of business owners to investigate differences in labour productivity between men-owned, women-owned and equally owned enterprises. This paper uses the Canadian Employer–Employee Dynamics Database (CEEDD).

    Release date: 2021-08-30

  • Articles and reports: 36-28-0001202100500004
    Description:

    The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how production occurs in the economy in two ways. One is the full or partial closure of non-essential activities such as travel, hospitality, arts and entertainment, personal services, airlines, etc. The other is the widespread shift from in-office work to working from home. This Insights article depicts labour productivity growth in Canada and its sources by industry during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to examine the implications these changes may have had on the productivity performance of the economy.

    Release date: 2021-05-26

  • Articles and reports: 11F0019M2020005
    Description:

    Understanding intangible investments is essential for providing accurate measures of gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), gross domestic product (GDP) and productivity growth, and for understanding the innovation system. Statistical agencies need measures of intangible investment to produce economic statistics on aggregate activity that accurately measure concepts such as GDP, GFCF or savings. The levels of GDP, GFCF and savings will be underestimated to the extent that expenditures are incorrectly classified as intermediate inputs that are fully consumed during the period being measured—and not as investments that are not fully consumed during the period when the expenditures are incurred. Estimates for GDP and productivity growth rates may be similarly underestimated. This paper updates and expands upon the intangible capital estimates presented by Baldwin et al. (2009), who extended already measured intangibles (i.e., research and development [R&D], software, mineral exploration) to include additional asset classes consistent with international research on intangible capital measurement (see Corrado, Hulten and Sichel 2009).

    Release date: 2020-02-12

  • Articles and reports: 11F0019M2020002
    Description:

    Labour productivity growth in the business sector in Canada started to decline in 2000, from 2.3% per year in the period from 1991 to 2000 to 1.0% per year in the period from 2000 to 2015. This paper examines how innovation, innovation diffusion across firms, and business dynamism affected the productivity slowdown.

    Release date: 2020-01-17

  • Articles and reports: 11-626-X2018084
    Description:

    This Economic Insights article examines the changes in productivity dispersion in Canadian manufacturing—that is, the difference between the productivity performance of the most productive plants (frontier plants) and the productivity performance of all remaining plants (non frontier plants). It examines the relationship between changes in productivity dispersion, aggregate manufacturing productivity growth and exchange rate movements.

    Release date: 2018-11-06

  • Articles and reports: 11F0019M2016373
    Description:

    This paper examines how much of the slowdown in productivity growth observed in Canada’s business sector between the 1990s (1990 to 1999) and the 2000s (2000 to 2014) was due to weaker productivity growth within industries and how much was due to structural adjustment. The analysis makes use of a decomposition method that differs from many of the standard labour productivity decomposition approaches commonly found in the literature and allows the contributions of changes in the importance of individual industries to be calculated.

    Release date: 2016-06-13
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Analysis (54)

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  • Articles and reports: 11F0027M2011071
    Geography: Canada
    Description:

    This paper asks how the performance of self-employed unincorporated businesses affects the size of the gap in labour productivity between Canada and the United States. To do so, the business sector in each country is divided into unincorporated and corporate businesses, and estimates of labour productivity are generated for each sector.

    The productivity performance of the unincorporated sector relative to the corporate sector is much lower in Canada than in the United States. As a result, when the unincorporated sector is removed from the estimates for the business sector in each country and only the corporate sectors for the two countries are compared, the gap in the level of productivity between Canada and the United States is reduced.

    The unincorporated sector consists of both sole proprietorships and partnerships. This paper also investigates the impact of just sole proprietorships on the Canada-United States productivity gap. Sole proprietorships in the two countries more closely resemble one another than do partnerships, as U.S. partnerships are much larger than their Canadian counterparts.

    When sole proprietorships are removed from the business-sector estimates of each country (allowing a comparison of sole proprietorships to the rest of the business sector, which consists of partnerships and the corporate sector), the gap in labour productivity between Canada and the United States also declines but by only about half as much as when both sole proprietorships and partnerships are removed.

    The lower productivity of the unincorporated sector (both sole proprietorships and partnerships) accounted for almost the entire productivity gap between Canada and the United States in 1998. Since then, the productivity of the corporate sector in Canada has fallen relative to that of the corporate sector in the United States and the unincorporated sector no longer accounts for the entire gap.

    Release date: 2011-07-28

  • Articles and reports: 11-010-X201100111401
    Geography: Canada
    Description:

    The 2008-2009 recession was less severe for both output and jobs than the two previous recessions. While the disruption of global financial markets did lead to a record drop in exports and severe cuts in business investment, household demand did not recede as much as in previous downturns and led the recovery. Canada is the only G7 nation to have returned to its pre-recession level, led by private domestic demand.

    Release date: 2011-01-13

  • Articles and reports: 11-010-X201001211393
    Geography: Canada
    Description:

    Output and employment growth regularly slows, as occurred over the summer of 2010. This paper looks at slowdowns over the last three decades, and finds they occur in response to a wide range of cyclical and irregular factors. However, they rarely if ever turn into recessions.

    Release date: 2010-12-09

  • Articles and reports: 15-206-X2010028
    Description:

    This study uses new GDP estimates for the unincorporated sector in order to examine labour productivity in the unincorporated sector and to compare it to that in the corporate sector over the period 1987 to 2005. The level of nominal GDP per hour worked is significantly lower for unincorporated enterprises ($23.20 in 2005) than it is for corporations ($43.40 in 2005). In 2005, GDP per hour worked in the unincorporated sector was just 53% of GDP per hour worked in the corporate sector.

    Release date: 2010-10-18

  • Articles and reports: 11-010-X201000511164
    Geography: Canada
    Description:

    Financial and commodity markets saw declines late in 2008 that set records for both speed and severity. This paper explores some of the reasons for these rapid declines and their implications for output and employment.

    Release date: 2010-05-13

  • Articles and reports: 11-010-X201000111075
    Geography: Canada
    Description:

    Since 1980, labour productivity has risen during recessions in Canada and the US, with the exception of Canada during 2008-2009. A detailed examination of each cyclical downturn since 1980 shows that employers have moved faster to cut labour inputs during recessions, especially in the US.

    Release date: 2010-01-14

  • Articles and reports: 15-206-X2009023
    Description:

    This paper examines the impact of the revisions to labour productivity estimates and related variables covering the revision cycle of the National Accounts from 2004 to 2007 for Canada and from 2005 to 2007 for the United States.

    Release date: 2009-03-11

  • Articles and reports: 15-206-X2008022
    Description:

    Many historical comparisons of international productivity use measures of labour productivity (output per worker). Differences in labour productivity can be caused by differences in technical efficiency or differences in capital intensity. Moving to measures of total factor productivity allows international comparisons to ascertain whether differences in labour productivity arise from differences in efficiency or differences in factors utilized in the production process.

    This paper examines differences in output per worker in the manufacturing sectors of Canada and the United States in 1929 and the extent to which it arises from efficiency differences. It makes corrections for differences in capital and materials intensity per worker in order to derive a measure of total factor efficiency of Canada relative to the United States, using detailed industry data. It finds that while output per worker in Canada was only about 75% of the United States productivity level, the total factor productivity measure of Canada was about the same as the United States level - that is, there was very little difference in technical efficiency in the two countries. Canada's lower output per worker was the result of the use of less capital and materials per worker than the United States.

    Release date: 2008-12-23

  • Articles and reports: 15-206-X2007010
    Description:

    This paper examines the impact of the revisions to labour productivity estimates and related variables covering the revision cycle of the National Accounts from 2003 to 2006 for Canada and from 2004 to 2006 for the United States.

    Release date: 2007-11-27

  • Articles and reports: 15-206-X2007011
    Description:

    This study examines Canadian productivity performance over the period 1961 to 2005. It investigates labour productivity growth and the sources of improvements therein-multifactor productivity growth, capital intensity, and skill upgrading. It also examines the contribution that productivity growth has made to economic growth, and to improvement on living standards. Finally, this study investigates the share of income going to labour, and the real hourly compensation of workers. This publication makes use of the new KLEMS database released on June 25, 2007 (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/13-605-x/13-605-x2007005-eng.htm).

    Release date: 2007-09-13
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