'Growth of output was slightly lower than that of hours worked, resulting in a moderate decline in productivity'
The labour productivity of Canadian businesses dropped in the second quarter of 2024, according to a report from Statistics Canada (StatCan).
Overall, productivity dropped 0.2% in the second three-month period of this year.
This comes after a 0.3% decline in the first quarter of the year and a 0.3% increase in the last quarter of 2023.
“In the second quarter of 2024, business output and hours worked both increased at a slightly faster pace than in the previous quarter. However, growth of output was slightly lower than that of hours worked, resulting in a moderate decline in productivity in the second quarter,” explained StatCan.
Source: Statistics Canada (StatCan)
Meanwhile, unit labour costs – which represent the costs of wages and benefits per unit of output – increased in Q2 2024.
“With the 0.2% decrease in productivity, a 0.6% growth in hourly compensation resulted in a 0.8% rise in unit labour costs of businesses in the second quarter. This represents a slowdown compared with the 1.3% increase recorded in the first quarter,” said the report.
“The slower pace of growth in hourly compensation (+0.6%) compared with the previous quarter (+1.0%) was the main factor contributing to the slowdown.”
Political conversations at work lead to lower productivity, according to a previous Randstad report.
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The productivity decline in the business sector was mainly attributable to service-producing businesses, which recorded a 0.3% decrease, according to StatCan.
This was largely due to declines in most service sectors, notably information and cultural industries (-2.1%), real estate services (-1.5%) and professional services (-0.9%).
For goods-producing businesses, productivity edged up by 0.1% in the second quarter, due to an increase in the mining and oil and gas extraction sector (+1.8%), which more than offset the decreases observed in the other goods sectors.
Overall, productivity was down in 11 of the 16 main industry sectors.
Source: Statistics Canada (StatCan)
Over eight in 10 (83%) employees say that they are most productive in hybrid settings, according to a previous Zoom report. However, the number of Canadians who are working from home most of the time seems to continue to drop, based on numbers previously published by StatCan.
