- Name
- Annual growth rate of real GDP per employed person
- Indicator purpose
- Conveys the annual percentage change in real GDP per employed person.
- Abstract
- This indicator measures labour productivity growth and provides information on the evolution, efficiency and quality of human capital in the production process. A country’s economic growth may be the result of either increased employment or more effective work by those who are employed. The annual growth rate of real GDP per employed person highlights ‘more effective work by those who are employed’ as a key measure of economic performance. Labour productivity (and growth) estimates can be used to support the formulation of labour market policies and monitor their effects. They can also contribute to the understanding of how labour market performance affects living standards.
- Contact organization / person
- Statistical Institute of Belize (SIB)
- Unit of measure
- Percentage
- Other characteristics
- The annual growth rate of real GDP per employed person reflects labour productivity which is the growth rate of output per unit of labour input (persons employed). A positive rate signifies that there is increased efficiency in the use of labour without adding more of other inputs. It may also mean that that each worker now has more of the other inputs such as physical capital, human capital or intermediate inputs. A negative result means that labour efficiency has decreased.
- Classification used
- Real GDP is GDP calculated at constant prices, that is, the volume level of GDP, removing the effect of inflation and instead favouring comparisons of quantities beyond price changes.
Employed persons are those persons of working age who during a short reference period such as a week, performed work for others in exchange for pay or profit.
- Disaggregation
- No disaggregation is required for this indicator.
- Key statistical concepts
- The computation method:
Real GDP per employed person= (GDP at constant prices)/(total employment);
The numerator and denominator of the equation above should refer to the same reference period, for example, the same calendar year. If we call the real GDP per employed person “LabProd”, then the annual growth rate of real GDP per employed person is calculated as follows:
Annual growth rate of Real GDP per employed person =((LabProd in year n)-(LabProd in year n-1))/((LabProd in year n-1))
- Recommended uses
- A proxy to measure sustainable economic growth in relation to productive employment.
- Other comments
- More sophisticated measures, such as “total factor productivity”, which is the output per combined unit of all inputs, are not included. Estimated labour productivity may also show an increase if the mix of activities in the economy or in an industry has shifted from activities with low levels of productivity to activities with higher levels, even if none of the activities have become more productive. For a constant “mix” of activities the best measure of labour input to be used in the productivity equation would be “total number of annual hours actually worked by all persons employed”. In many cases, however, this labour input measure is difficult to obtain or estimate reliably.
All the metadata shown in this document was gathered from United Nation Statistics Division. The metadata was extracted from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/.
- Baseline
- -2.2% (2015)
- Target 2020
- Increase towards 5%
- Target 2030
- Exceeds 5%
