Productivity puzzle revisited: what the latest official data tells us about the UK’s biggest economic issue - About the Office for National Statistics

One of the main drivers of improved labour composition over the past decade is the increase in the number of workers with university degrees. [...] The finest of the aggregations is similar to the intermediate aggregation, suggesting that there is usually little difference in the level of productivity of industry “divisions” within each industry “section”. [...] As such, in the decade between the financial crisis and pandemic the allocation effect stopped boosting productivity to the same degree as in the decade before the financial crisis. [...] Industry slowdowns Turning to industries with slowing productivity growth since the financial crisis, Figure 8 shows the contributions of high-level industry aggregates to productivity growth comparing the decade before the financial crisis, and the decade since10. [...] Figure 13 shows a scatter plot of the average annual growth rates in productivity by detailed industries, in the decade before the financial crisis and the decade thereafter.