![Productivity Surprises](http://scokobro.github.io/images/hands.png)
Hi-ho Hi-ho, it's off to work we go...
Productivity Surprises
PUBLISHED: 25 Apr 2015Perhaps I have just fallen for the hype, against the evidence of my own senses, but I always kind of thought that Japanese workers were pretty handy compared to other countries. The data on productivity from the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) came as - if not actually a shock - a corrective surprise.
![2012 GDP per worker UK=100](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24949891/images/worker.png)
The UK is pretty much at the bottom of the G7 heap, apart from Japan. I am assuming this is due to the Japanese business taboo against reducing staff numbers. Humane (perhaps) but inefficient. I’m pretty sure the same can’t be said of business in the UK.
![2012 GDP per worked hour UK=100](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24949891/images/hour.png)
Again, Japan and the UK bring up the rear in the G7 productivity league. Too many workers, too little to do - this probably explains the large number of dozing ‘sarariman-of-a-certain age’ that one tends to see in certain chains of smoker-friendly cafes around town. Or do I have cause and effect in the wrong order?
![Fluctuations in productivity since 1990. UK=100](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24949891/images/time-series.png)
This shows the flow of change over the past 22 years. A gradual relative improvement for the UK relative to most of the other G7 countries until 2005 and then a gradual fall. Japan fell below UK levels in ‘end of Bubble’ 1993 and has been pretty consistently tracking along the bottom ever since.
I suspect my understanding of the relative proficiencies of Japanese and UK industries goes back to my days in college and hearing about ‘Igirisu-byo’ (The British Disease) which referred to the chronic labour-relations problems that dogged the UK in the 1960s and 70s.
Nobody’s got round to creating a wikipedia page for Nihon-byo yet.
• Original data release can be found here.
• Guardian story, here.
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- Outlook for commercial broadcasters in Japan · MIC Survey of Broadcaster Sentiment
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- Book chapter · Camera angles study
- Lazy ways to prepare multiple document types. · Scrivener Pandoc
- Hi-ho Hi-ho, it’s off to work we go… · Productivity Surprises
- Visual Communication paper · Social Distance Portrayed
- Japanese Studies paper · At the Digital Watershed: Terrestrial Television Broadcasting in Japan
- Bank Accounts in Japan · How many is enough?
- Television licenses · NHK announces licence fee payment rates
- PhD Thesis · Reading news images in Japan: Visual semiosis in the context of television representation.
RESEARCH
research japan statistics post