We then estimate the difference between the average labour productivity of the firms that workers leave and the average labour productivity of the firms they join.1 The size of this ‘productivity gap’ indicates whether workers are, on average, moving to more productive firms.2 We find that: 1. [...] The average productivity of the firms workers move to is 13.1% higher than the average productivity of the firms they leave. [...] In our headline analysis, we make the following adjustments to the raw productivity estimates that are common in the literature (see, for example, Albagli et al., 2021): • Winsorize the top and bottom 2.5% of the firm productivity distribution to avoid extreme values distorting the results. [...] We still find that the average productivity of destination firms is higher than the average productivity of origin firms (with the exception of the TFP results post GFC) and that this difference has fallen in recent years relative to the early 2000s. [...] Any discussion of data limitations or weaknesses is in the context of using the data for statistical purposes, and is not related to the ability of the data to support the ABR or ATO’s core operational requirements.
- Pages
- 7
- Published in
- Australia
