Data Collection - productivity Stats 2021

Productivity measures statistics Notes about this release Data for 2020 and 2021 are provisional and subject to revision as new or updated data becomes available. Industry-level data is available up to 2021. Data sources We derived the data used in this release from the sources below. Data Publication Release date Output Gross domestic product: September 2021 quarter 16-Dec-21 Labour volume Business employment data: September 2021 quarter 09-Dec-21 Labour market statistics: September 2021 quarter 3-Nov-21 Linked employer-employee data: March 2020 year (annual tables) 30-Nov-21 Capital National accounts (industry production and investment): Year ended March 2020 19-Nov-21 Income shares National accounts (industry production and investment): Year ended March 2020 19-Nov-21 User costs National accounts (industry production and investment): Year ended March 2020 19-Nov-21 Changes made due to COVID-19 The emergence of COVID-19 in early 2020, and the Government’s response to it, will have affected these statistics. COVID-19 presented challenges for national account and productivity compilers around the globe. We used a range supplementary data to carefully evaluate our estimates and, where necessary, have used alternative data sources to produce more precise and accurate measurement. Output changes Output measures used in Productivity measures statistics are consistent with those published in Gross domestic product: September 2021 quarter released on 16 December 2021. Background information on methodology and data source changes introduced into our QGDP output measures can be found in September 2020 quarter gross domestic product and COVID-19 and Gross domestic product: September 2020 quarter – changes and revisions. We have also made changes to both capital and labour inputs across all industries in order that they capture the effects of COVID-19 and associated response measures. This is done to maintain consistency with the approach adopted for output measures, without which productivity statistics would not be meaningful. Failure to change methods for capital and labour inputs would have resulted in understated measures of labour, capital, and multifactor productivity for 2021, and a less accurate calculation of capital deepening. Labour input changes For labour inputs in the year ended March 2021, we have calculated growth rates for each series based on the movement in an alternative indicator. This alternative indicator is compiled by multiplying average jobs filled, from Business Employment Data (BED), and average actual hours worked, from the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS). Due to data availability, we have been able to apply this approach, which is more comprehensive that the approach used for the year ended March 2020. For that year we have retained the approach originally used, which was to adjust labour inputs by industry based on the fall in average actual hours worked, relative to usual hours worked. For both years, the alternative approaches mark a departure from our normal approach of using hours paid, or usual hours worked, towards using actual hours worked. Ideally, productivity statistics should be capturing actual hours worked and, whilst we have previously used hours paid or usual hours worked as proxy measures, this relied on the presumption of a strong link between these series. That link is believed to have been broken by the effects of COVID-19. Capital input changes For capital inputs in the year ended March 2021, we continue the approach used in the preceding year. This is to apply an adjustment to capital input series, for each industry, based on change in the capacity utilisation of capital. In the absence of data that explicitly measures the change in utilisation of capital, we have chosen to assume a direct relationship with the change in utilisation of labour, as measured by the fall in actual hours worked, relative to usual hours worked. This assumption is based on the belief that changes in utilisation of both labour and capital were driven by similar factors, in particular the full or partial closure of workplaces under COVID-19 response measures. We do not normally adjust for the under-utilisation of capital inputs. In reality the fall in capital inputs was not necessarily consistent with the relative fall in labour inputs (e.g. people working at home did not have access to their usual office space / equipment) but we consider this approach to be better than making no adjustment, which would have impacted the calculation of other variables. The approach that we have used means that the COVID-19 adjustments to labour and capital inputs did not have undesirable impacts on capital deepening or multifactor productivity. Revisions We incorporated several revisions in this release. The revisions are usually driven by new or improved data that affect historical results, or changes to the underlying measures. The key revisions are discussed below. Every year, before the release of September quarter GDP statistics, Stats NZ updates its quarterly GDP series following the inclusion of new annual benchmarks in calculations. We now have a comprehensive view of the economy and goods and services flows up to the March 2020 year. This sees our national accounts statistics reflect a more up-to-date structure of the economy. The new annual data comes from National accounts (industry production and investment): Year ended March 2020 and National accounts (income and expenditure): Year ended March 2021, both released on 19 November 2021. Updates in data sources have also led to revisions to the previously published productivity series. These included: revised constant-price GDP data feeding into the output series. revised current-price national accounts data feeding into the industry income-based weights. revised current and constant price productive capital stock data, feeding into the capital input series. Revisions to the productive capital stock arose from revisions to gross fixed capital formation by industry introduced in the latest annual national accounts releases. revised and updated labour data feeding into the labour volume series. en-NZ