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Why are these statistics needed?

Labour productivity is an important economic indicator which provides information on the efficiency of human capital in the production process of an economy.

‘In the long run, raising productivity is the only way to achieve higher living standards.’

(Valdis Dombrovskis, European Commission Vice-President for the euro and social dialogue)

Why are they considered statistics under development?

These statistics are under development because quality-adjusted labour input (QALI) cannot yet be considered as official statistics for several reasons:

  • some detailed results can't be published because of reliability of data sources
  • the employment definition in LFS differs from the one used in national accounts
  • the structure of earning survey (SES) as a four-year survey should be interpolated for the years in between surveys
  • the industry classification has changed in 2008 (from NACE revision 1 to NACE revision 2), which requires a mapping to produce long time series.

Nevertheless, such an approach provides a more detailed picture of the input of labour to the production process. QALI is a more suitable method to use in growth accounting analyses as it better explains GDP developments.

QALI data should not be analysed on a year-to-year basis, but as an indicator of trends over a longer period.

How are they produced?

The dataset presented in this section is the result of a project involving Eurostat and the Joint Research Centre that was carried out between 2014 and 2016 to combine national accounts data with microdata from surveys.

The latest updated estimates present data for the European Union (from 2011), the euro area (from 2003) and the 27 EU members.

The dataset defines the quality of the workforce using the age of the worker as measure of experience and the highest academic qualification attained, according to the international standard classification of education (ISCED), as measure of skills. the QALI indicator is calculated as growth rate or index and not as labour input levels.

A Törnqvist index is used to estimate the QALI index. 

For further details, please consult our  methodological note.

Access to the statistics

DS SuD > QALI > Feedback > EN

Feedback

To help Eurostat improve these statistics, users and researchers are kindly invited to give us their feedback by email:

  • What do you use QALI statistics for?
  • Is the concept of the QALI indicator and the way in which it is produced easy to understand in its current form?
  • Do you have any suggestions for improvement in terms of the method or additional breakdown?

Further reading