The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Productivity, the output produced per worker or per unit of input, drives long-run living standards. In many economies a small group of firms and places pull ahead while most lag, and gains do not reach workers evenly. This page sets out how productivity grows and spreads, why it often stays concentrated, how it is measured, and what evidence serves the ministries and agencies that seek growth whose gains are widely shared.
Inclusive productivity · National economy · Scenario: import price shock
| Food processing | ▼ 9 | 3288 | Backward |
| Transport | ▼ 5 | 1016 | Forward |
| Construction | ▼ 4 | 1920 | Backward |
| Retail | ▼ 2 | 10,543 | Demand |
local units, billions, illustrative
Fig.Shock propagation model. Design wireframe with placeholder names and illustrative values, not a record or a live system.
Inclusive productivity is productivity growth whose gains reach workers, firms and regions widely. In many economies frontier firms pull ahead while others lag, workers move slowly between sectors, credit and land are misallocated, and wages rise only where labour markets let workers capture gains.
For inclusive productivity, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on population density, night lights and true-colour imagery with true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on Africa; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.
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NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
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For inclusive productivity, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on population density, night lights and true-colour imagery with true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on Africa; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
Layers and dates
Productivity, distribution and economic opportunity. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Frontier firms adopt technology and management practices quickly, while many small and informal firms lag. The gap between them can widen even as averages rise.
Moving labour from low- to high-productivity activities raises growth, but skills, location and information slow that reallocation.
Credit, land and regulation often favour connected firms over productive ones, so capital and labour are not used where they produce most.
Productivity growth raises wages only where labour markets, bargaining and skills let workers capture some of it.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Total factor productivity | Output growth not explained by growth in measured inputs such as labour and capital. |
| Misallocation | Use of capital and labour in less productive firms or activities than possible. |
| Labour share | The share of national income paid to workers as wages and benefits. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labour productivity | output per worker or per hour in constant prices | annual | National accounts and labour statistics | OFFICIAL |
| Total factor productivity | index | annual | Growth accounting databases | ESTIMATED |
| Productivity dispersion across firms | ratio of top to bottom deciles | per census or survey | Firm-level data | ESTIMATED |
| Labour share of income | percent of GDP | annual | National accounts | ESTIMATED |
| Informal employment | percent of employment | annual | Labour force surveys | OFFICIAL |
| Real wage growth | percent change | annual | Wage statistics | OFFICIAL |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| Penn World Table (Groningen Growth and Development Centre) | Output, inputs and productivity across countries | Open, CC BY 4.0 |
| ILOSTAT | Employment, informality, labour share and wages | Open, CC BY 4.0 |
| World Bank Enterprise Surveys | Firm performance, constraints and practices | Free with registration, World Bank terms |
| OECD Productivity Statistics | Productivity by country and industry | Public, OECD terms |
| UNU-WIDER and GGDC Economic Transformation Database | Sectoral employment and value added | Open, licence to check |
Economic Development prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Ministries of finance and planning | Which constraints on productivity to address first | Productivity profiles; misallocation evidence |
| Ministries of labour | How to help workers share productivity gains | Wage and labour share evidence |
| Development banks | Where support for firms and skills raises productivity most | Firm-level evidence |
Productivity rises through better technology, more and better capital, improved skills and management, and the reallocation of resources from less to more productive uses. In many developing economies, large differences in productivity exist within the same sector, with many small, informal firms alongside a few highly productive ones.
Distribution depends on how gains are shared between capital and labour, between skilled and less skilled workers, and between regions. Market power, labour institutions, access to finance and education all shape this. Productivity growth concentrated in capital-intensive sectors may create few jobs.
Shocks can have lasting effects. Firms that close lose organisational knowledge; workers who are unemployed for long periods lose skills; and cut investment slows technology adoption.
Decomposing output growth into inputs and efficiency. Results depend on how capital and quality are measured.
Using enterprise surveys and administrative data. Informal firms are often missing.
Household surveys and tax data on income and consumption. Top incomes and informal earnings are under-recorded.
Testing programmes such as training or credit using causal inference. Results may not transfer between settings.
Productivity in services, public sectors and informal activity is particularly hard to measure, and estimates are revised often.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.