Data Collection 1978 - 2020

Productivity measures statistics Notes about this release Data for 2019 and 2020 are provisional and subject to revision as new or updated data becomes available. Industry-level data is available up to 2020. Data sources We derived the data used in this release from the sources below. Data Publication Release date Output Gross domestic product: September 2020 quarter 17-Dec-20 Labour volume Linked employer-employee data: September 2019 quarter 25-Nov-20 Labour market statistics: September 2020 quarter 4-Nov-20 Linked employer-employee data: March 2019 year (annual tables) 30-Nov-20 Capital National accounts (industry production and investment): Year ended March 2019 20-Nov-20 Income shares National accounts (industry production and investment): Year ended March 2019 20-Nov-20 User costs National accounts (industry production and investment): Year ended March 2019 20-Nov-20 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 2020 quarter released on 17 December 2020. 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 also applied adjustments to both capital and labour inputs across all industries so that these results would be meaningful. Not all countries have done that. Not all countries have had sufficient data to be able to do that. Failure to adjust both capital and labour inputs would have resulted in understated measures of labour, capital, and multifactor productivity for 2020, and a less accurate calculation of capital deepening. Labour input changes For labour inputs we used actual hours worked data as reported in the household labour force survey, by industry, to estimate the fall in hours worked between levels 3 and 4 and applied those to the number of days spent at each level to determine the fall in hours worked across the year due to COVID-19 restrictions. Capital input changes For capital inputs we used the same adjustment as for labour inputs but applied it to the existing movement in capital inputs. This effectively accounted for capital not being utilised because workers were unable to use and access it during alert levels 3 and 4. 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 2019 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 2019 and National accounts (income and expenditure): Year ended March 2020, both released on 20 November 2020. 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