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Labour Productivity, Q4 2014

• UK labour productivity as measured by output per hour fell by 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2014 compared with the previous quarter. In 2014 as a whole, labour productivity was little changed from 2013, and slightly lower than in 2007, prior to the economic downturn.
• This edition contains revised historical estimates of labour productivity back to 1948, consistent with revisions to National Accounts introduced in Blue Book 2014. These estimates show that the absence of productivity growth in the seven years since 2007 is unprecedented in the post-war period.
• Despite weak productivity growth, unit labour costs have increased only modestly, by less than 1% per year on average over the last five years. This reflects low growth in labour costs per hour worked.
• Notwithstanding a fall in manufacturing output per hour in the final quarter of 2014, there was a broad-based and robust recovery in productivity across manufacturing in 2014 as a whole. Productivity also grew in 2014 across the construction industry.
• Productivity across all service industries grew a little in the final quarter of 2014 and in 2014 as a whole. But productivity performance was more varied between different service industries: output per hour fell in six service industries and rose in five.

Get all the tables for this publication in the data section of this publication.