Falling productivity - cause or symptom of the recession?

The annual rate of growth of output per hour worked (seasonally adjusted) for the UK economy is falling for the first time since the mid 1990s. There are good reasons for thinking that labour productivity tends to directly related to the business cycle; when demand and output is strong, firms will be making full use of their existing factor resources and capacity utilisation will be high. In a downturn, there are spare factor resources and productivity growth may suffer if businesses do not wish to adjust their labour force in response to declining demand.

The danger is that, in the absence of flexible pay that reflects lower output per hour, weaker productivity will cause a rise in unit labour costs and this will put further pressure on business profit margins and the internal funds available to finance investment. UK productivity continues to lag behind levels achieved by many of our major international competitor nations.