Productivity and participation: an international comparison

The purpose of this project is to increase our knowledge about trade-offs between productivity and labour market participation across the OECD, and more specifically in the European Union. The inquiry is focused around the question whether there is a trade-off between labour participation and productivity and, if so, how big it is and how long does it last. In particular, through a series of panel regressions we isolate the structural or long-term relationships, as well as identify how long the “longterm” is. We also investigate the extent to which the trade-offs can be associated with particular types of workers (in terms of age or gender). Our main findings are, firstly, that the negative productivity response elasticity to a 1% rise in participation (measured as the employment rate) is less than 0.3 and peters out in less than 5 years. Secondly, increased participation is the key factor related to this productivity growth tradeoff. We find little effect of hours per worker on productivity. Thirdly, female participation has the strongest negative impact on productivity growth, but it is associated with specific age and/or cohort effects that are likely to diminish in the longer run. Finally, we investigate simple scenarios to look at the effect of increases in participation on productivity and per capita income, showing the large potential for income gains without much loss in productivity.