Why is UK output per hour so low?

cepheus

It seems that the USA, Germany & France make 25-30% more GDP per work hour than the UK, whilst surprisingly Japan makes less.

This suggests to me that if our economy is doing well as the government claims, it must be because we are employed for longer hours in lower grade jobs than the countries scoring more highly than us, unless they simply work harder than us.

Perhaps this criterion is a better measure of how successful an economy is than GDP per capita? We should be aiming for quality work and perhaps lower working hours per week, whilst at the same time retaining an adequate standard of living.

satchmeister

Our GDP growth is helped by out hard-working houses who each earned £27,000 last year ... far more than the lazy average worker who only earned £25,000 and there are more houses than workers.

CLAPTON

always qualified by how reliable the figures are; the high immigration into the UK of well qualified people probably discourages investment in higher productivity

michaels

Apparently after a long study the reason for low productivity was identified as people spending too much of their working day on house price forums....

More seriously we used to have lots of high value add employees in sectors such as banking and related industries but out of spite against high earners we have done our best to close them down and run them out of time.

stator

GDP is a made up statistic. It represents nothing concrete. GDP per hour doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.

KrytenIceCubeHead

Post crash businesses have been screwed for investment, as banks sit on the money sent out by Government to repair their balance sheets, and investment drives productivity. Even Marky Marx (or was it Lenny Lenin) said 'technology is neutral'. Working in IT, I've seen the 'plans' for recycling PCs go from every 3 years, which is well beyond when a computer has been overtaken by developments, to ... well, not.

Cyberman60

Basically, the UK is full of lazy people who expect something for nothing, encouraged by a very expensive welfare system not to work hard. WTCs etc. Simples !!!!

Andy_L

AIUI France & Germany, with higher employee costs tend to invest first in equipment to make their existing staff more productive and then hire more staff of its a prolonged upturn whilst uk companies can hire & fire more or less at will.
Germany has a far more cooperative relationship between management, workers & unions

Generali

If output per hour had continued along its trend from before the GFC it would be behind Germany and France but not by very much, at 116 on the graph there* and nobody would be talking about this.

Nobody really knows the reason and many economists have spendt a lot of time looking at this. Take the Bank of England for example:

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q201.pdf

Factors related to the nature of the financial crisis are likely to be having a persistent impact on the level of productivity — but there remains considerable uncertainty around any interpretation of the puzzle.

So highly productive bankers are no longer employed/as productive and so that will push down productivity to a certain extent. I suspect part of the problem is that British workers are undercpaitalised, that British workers do more stuff manually and use fewer machines. If you watch a gang of workers on the UK railways vs those on the French or German ones you'll see what I mean.

The difference probably reflects the different cost of capital in different countries which in turn is probably a result of high inflation in the 1970s and 1980-90s, i.e. economic mismanagement by both Tories and Labour.

*well actually still on 100 because 100 = UK output/hr but you know what I mean I hope, the graph would be rebased around a new 'higher' 100.

Cyberman60

Andy_L wrote: »

AIUI France & Germany, with higher employee costs tend to invest first in equipment to make their existing staff more productive and then hire more staff of its a prolonged upturn whilst uk companies can hire & fire more or less at will.
Germany has a far more cooperative relationship between management, workers & unions

Basically the other countries work fewer hours and for more pay. It's a bit of a meaningless statistical analysis IMO. We have imported lots of cheap labour which will inevitably put us down the league year on year until we tackle unfettered immigration. :rotfl:

Cyberman60

Generali wrote: »

If output per hour had continued along its trend from before the GFC it would be behind Germany and France but not by very much, at 116 on the graph there* and nobody would be talking about this.

Nobody really knows the reason and many economists have spendt a lot of time looking at this. [/B]Take the Bank of England for example:

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q201.pdf



So highly productive bankers are no longer employed/as productive and so that will push down productivity to a certain extent. I suspect part of the problem is that British workers are undercpaitalised, that British workers do more stuff manually and use fewer machines. If you watch a gang of workers on the UK railways vs those on the French or German ones you'll see what I mean.

The difference probably reflects the different cost of capital in different countries which in turn is probably a result of high inflation in the 1970s and 1980-90s, i.e. economic mismanagement by both Tories and Labour.

*well actually still on 100 because 100 = UK output/hr but you know what I mean I hope, the graph would be rebased around a new 'higher' 100.

The only reason you're talking about this is clutching at straws to bash UKPLC because there's so few reasons to bash the Coalition.

The reasons why we're down the league are obvious, and outside our control as all and sundry come to the UK to work for low pay. Our success economically is causing our failure immigration-wise and thus pushing us down the table. Simples !!