Main Sources of Quarterly Labour Productivity Data for the Euro Area

Labour productivity and its measurement is an important issue for the European Central Bank (ECB). Growth in productivity is key for non-infl ationary growth. In addition to structural (annual) data, the ECB requires relatively highly aggregated and timely data on productivity growth for short-term economic analysis. The ECB has for several years calculated euro area productivity estimates and published them in its Monthly Bulletin. The calculation used is GDP per person employed, taken from the European System of Accounts 1995 (ESA95) national accounts. While this calculation is acknowledged to be a less than perfect measurement, there is a scarcity of other suitable data for the euro area, especially data fulfi lling the timeliness requirement. The ECB also uses a number of supplementary euro area productivity indicators from both quantitative and qualitative surveys, which are explained in this note.