"Productivity is a measure of the ability to create goods and services from a given amount of labour, capital, materials, land, knowledge, time, or any combination of those. As the Pre-Budget Report of 1998 put it "it is a fundamental yardstick of economic performance". A high national productivity level typically indicates efficient production of goods and services and a competitive economy. This article looks at productivity from a labour market perspective. The aim is to look at the importance of productivity, the different ways of measuring it, the different drivers of productivity within the labour market, and to put the UK's recent performance into both an historical and international perspective."

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