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

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.