Can Sectoral Reallocations of Labour Explain Canada’s Abysmal Productivity Performance?

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Abstract

This report presents a framework for decomposing aggregate productivity growth into within-sector effects and sectoral reallocation effects. This framework is used to analyze productivity growth in 12 Canadian industries for the 1961-2007 period and for several subperiods. The results do not support the common view that Canada’s weak post-2000 productivity performance is attributable to a reallocation of labour toward mining, oil and gas, a sector with low productivity growth. Rather, it was the fall in labour productivity growth in manufacturing that accounted for all of the slowdown in business sector productivity growth after 2000. P RODUCTIVITY GROWTH HAS BEEN slow in

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