News release: “U.S. productivity weathered the recession well, growing 2.5 percent (in per hour terms) in 2009, The Conference Board reported today. This blip in the prevailing downward trend in U.S. productivity was largely explained by dramatically reduced working hours that offset output decline (employment fell by 3.6 percent in 2009; hours worked per worker by 1.5 percent.) U.S. productivity growth is projected at 3 percent for 2010. European productivity growth turned negative in 2009, falling far behind the United States. Output per hour fell 1 percent in the Euro Area.
The Conference Board Total Economy Database provides a comprehensive overview of growth rates of productivity, GDP, employment and hours worked for 123 economies representing 97 percent of the world’s population and 99 percent of global output. It also contains estimated levels of productivity (expressed in U.S. dollars and adjusted for relative price differences), as well as the levels of GDP, employment, hours worked (for selected countries), population, and labor productivity. (Productivity per hour captures those workers who are still employed, but at reduced hours.) The Total Economy Database draws largely on such international sources as the OECD, Eurostat and the IMF, and also from the latest national accounts, labor surveys, and other employment statistics available for individual countries. New to the Total Economy Database this year is Total Factor Productivity (TFP), which accounts for such sources as improvements in workers skills, machinery and software. TFP is a more precise measure of efficiency than labor productivity.”
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