Labour productivity statistics: 2024
An Official Statistics in Development publication for Scotland.
Annual estimates of labour productivity statistics for Scotland’s onshore economy for the years 1998-2024
Part of
Correction
30 September 2025: The data originally published in Table 5 for the EU27 was found to be incorrent due to a processing error for the tables. This has now been corrected. This error did not affect the growth rates presented in the publication.
Introduction
Labour productivity measures the amount of economic output that is produced, on average, by each unit of labour input, and is an important indicator of economic performance.
Within this release, output is defined as gross value added (GVA) and is consistent with the latest Quarterly national accounts for 2025 quarter 1. Labour input, defined as productivity jobs and productivity hours, is consistent up to 2023 with the latest UK Regional and subregional labour productivity release from ONS. Provisional estimates for 2024 are based on a range of data including Labour Force Survey (LFS) microdata, public sector employment (PSE) statistics, and workforce jobs statistics.
This publication contains a brief summary of the key results from the latest productivity statistics, focusing in on the headline measures of change in output per hour worked.
The key results are presented in real terms (or volume terms) where the effect of price changes has been removed to allow for meaningful comparisons over time. Estimates are for Scotland’s onshore economy.
Full results including estimates of output per job, current price productivity measures (not adjusted for price changes) and estimates of labour productivity by industry are available in the downloadable tables.
An Official Statistics in Development Publication for Scotland
These statistics are official statistics in development. Official statistics in development may be new or existing statistics, and will be tested with users, in line with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics. Until 2025 these statistics we published as official statistics, but their designation has been changed to reflect higher levels of uncertainty around the use of Labour Force Survey data in recent years.
Labour productivity statistics are derived estimates and their quality is dependent on the other data sets used in their production. For output, gross value added (GVA) estimates are from the Quarterly National Accounts, which are accredited official statistics. For labour inputs, estimates are based on a number of sources including the Labour Force Survey. At the present time, all Labour Force Survey estimates are classed as official statistics in development, including the UK productivity statistics produced by the ONS.
Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates for January to March 2025 onwards include the full impact of the recovery efforts made to the LFS data collection and sampling methods introduced by ONS from January 2024. However, these estimates may still be subject to the effect of further ongoing improvements. An increased amount of volatility will remain in the LFS estimates from mid-2023 until the end of 2024. Therefore, ONS still advise caution when interpreting changes over time including these time periods.