Economic productivity, measured by the value of goods and services produced per hour worked, is a key indicator of efficiency and overall prosperity.This chart ranks the world’s 30 largest economies by GDP per hour worked (in U.S. dollars), revealing where output has grown or stagnated over the past two decades.While advanced economies tend to dominate the top of the list, some emerging markets have seen extraordinary gains as they industrialize and integrate into global supply chains. The data for this visualization comes from the International Labour Organization (ILO).
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33 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 20 Nov
Productivity is important but it’s less relevant to standard of living than total compensation
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42 sats \ 2 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 20 Nov
Yeah, I agree. Productivity is just an economic indicator, and sometimes it’s used to make fun of some countries. Like, just because a country’s productivity is low, it doesn’t mean people aren’t working hard.
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33 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 20 Nov
It’s a useful metric for how smoothly an economy is converting labor into stuff.
It’s misleading for comparing European countries, which have tons of labor “protections”, with America because Americans work a lot more hours and labor has diminishing marginal returns like everything else.
If dumb policies made it infeasible to work so much, then Americans would be poorer and total output would be less but American labor would be more productive.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 20 Nov
America relies upon a lot of undocumented workers providing work at very low rates of pay.
Oil revenue is also a significant factor in many countries on the graph- eg Norway and Saudi Arabia.
Having a wealth of oil or other natural resources can hugely distort apparent 'productivity'
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30 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 20 Nov
Ireland is kinda interesting. Haven't they made themselves a tax haven?
I am pretty skeptical of GDP accounting (and thus productivity measures) for the service sector, especially financial services. What is "labor productivity" for a day trader, or a compliance officer, for example?
As a colleague of mine likes to say, "Do you create surplus or do you just move it around?"
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 20 Nov
yes
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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @unboiled 20 Nov
Do the numbers take inflation into account?
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42 sats \ 4 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 20 Nov
I’m not sure, I don’t even know if it makes sense to factor inflation into that indicator. You think they should factor in inflation? cc/ @Undisciplined
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33 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 20 Nov
No. It’s a cross-sectional snapshot.
There are other adjustments that are worth considering, like whether they did or should use a purchasing power parity adjustment. That might depend more on whether standard of living or output efficiency is of greater interest.
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42 sats \ 2 replies \ @unboiled 20 Nov
That makes sense to me if the only comparisons made are relative to each other, fixed at any one chosen point in time or a chosen period.
But saying for example that Belgium's GDP per hour has grown by 12.4% since 2005 seems off if the measuring stick has changed so much over 20 years.
Edit to add: If inflation doesn't matter, does that mean we would get the same value out of the charts if it was denominated in, say, Turkish Lira?
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 20 Nov
I see what you mean. I was just thinking about the rankings in each period, which only requires doing the right currency conversion (less trivial than it sounds).
Yeah, if you’re interested in the slope between periods, then getting the inflation adjustment right also matters.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 20 Nov
Take a closer look here:
https://ilostat.ilo.org/topics/labour-productivity/#elementor-toc__heading-anchor-1
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