Productivity Growth in the OECD Area: Some Recent Findings

The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has in recent years devoted considerable resources to the study of productivity trends in the OECD area. In this article, Dirk Pilat, a senior economist at the OECD provides an overview of the key results of this research effort. These include the finding that: the United States continues to have the highest level of GDP per capita in the OECD area; the gap between the aggregate productivity level in the United States and in other OECD countries increased in the 1990s after falling up to then, reflecting the rebound in U.S. productivity growth, a phenomenon not observed elsewhere; divergences in productivity growth performance are not due to different measurement techniques used in OECD countries; and difference in GDP per capita trends reflect differences in labour utilization, with the United States enjoying strong growth in both productivity and the employment rate while many European countries experiencing limited employment growth.