The Best Path to Prosperity?

Between 1970 and 2000, GDP per person rose by 64% in the United States and by 60% in France. In America, this came about because productivity per worker rose by 38% and hours worked per worker rose by 26%.

In France, it came about because productivity rose by 83% while hours worked fell by 23%.

Source.

Which led me to think: isn’t GDP/hours-worked a better measure of “the good life” than GDP/capita? You can have stunning GDP/capita if everyone works all the time. (Hey: what country does that make me think of?)

Which led me to dig up the excellent OECD data sets on labor productivity here. (Not to worry, it’s not XLS or PDF, just spiffy HTML/CSS; Check ’em out–excellent interactive spreadsheets with pop-up menus and such.)

About which–if you get back here–you’ll be hearing a lot more.

For now, here are the 2006 numbers (dollars converted using purchasing power parity).

$/worker hour Relative to US (100)
Luxembourg 72 143
Norway 71 141
Belgium 53 104
Netherlands 51 102
Ireland 52 102
United States 50 100
France 50 99
Germany 47 93
Sweden 45 89
G7 countries 45 89
Euro-zone (excluding Denmark, Sweden and
United Kingdom)
43 86
Denmark 43 85
NAFTA 42 84
Austria 42 84
Australia 42 83
United Kingdom 41 82
Finland 41 82
Canada 41 82
Switzerland 40 80
OECD-Europe (excluding Turkey) 40 79
EU19 (EU members that are also OECD
members)
40 79
Spain 39 78
Italy 38 76
OECD 38 75
Japan 36 71
Iceland 36 71
New Zealand 28 56
Slovak Republic 25 50
Portugal 24 48
Hungary 24 47
Czech Republic 22 44
Korea 20 41
Poland 19 38
Mexico 16 32
Turkey 15 29

Posted

in

by

Tags:

Comments

One response to “The Best Path to Prosperity?”

  1. Monte Asbury Avatar

    Excellent. I’m pitching your posts on Clipmarks – see The True Conservative and Prosperity: GDP per person or per hours worked?. They’re excellent, and I hope some of the Clipmarks folks come by for more details.