Productivity profile of the United Kingdom

Bank of England (BoE): Research of the Bank of England underpins the Bank’s policy activities on subjects relevant to its core duties, including monetary and financial stability.

Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR): The Office for Budget Responsibility is an official independent fiscal watchdog and provides analysis of the UK’s public finances, including 1) economic and fiscal forecasting; 2) evaluating performance against targets; 3) sustainability and balance sheet analysis; 4) evaluation of fiscal risks; 5) scrutinising tax and welfare policy costing.

UK Productivity Commission: Established by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) and The Productivity Institute (TPI), with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Independent from the government, it examines the UK’s productivity performance, and provides policy solutions to address the shortfall.

Bank of England: Beliefs- and fundamentals-driven job creation (2023), The size-centrality relationship in production networks (2022), Mainly employment: survey-based news and the business cycle (2022), The impact of COVID-19 on productivity (2022), Slow recoveries, endogenous growth and macroprudential policy (2021), Trend and cycle shocks in Bayesian unobserved components models for UK productivity (2019), The Brexit vote, productivity growth and macroeconomic adjustments in the United Kingdom (2019), International trade, non-trading firms and their impact on labour productivity (2019), The UK’s Productivity Problem: Hub no Spokes (2018);

Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR): Economic and fiscal outlook (2023);

UK Productivity Commission: Reports, Transcripts and Summaries (multiple);

National Institute of Economic and Social Research: Covid-19 and Productivity: Impact and Implications (2022), Productivity and Levelling Up (2022), How to not miss a productivity revival again (2021), Regional disparities in labour productivity and the role of capital stock (2020), Is the UK Productivity Slowdown Unprecedented? (2020);

Office for National Statistics (ONS): Economic output and productivity (with recent data and analyses on Output, Productivity, and Public service productivity), Firm-level labour productivity measures from the Annual Business Survey (2022), Investment in intangible assets in the UK (2022), Management practices, homeworking and productivity during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic (2021), Which Occupations are at Highest Risk of Being Automated? (2019), Information and Communication Technology Intensity and Productivity (2018);

OECD: Economic Surveys: United Kingdom (multiple), Economic Policy Reforms 2023: Going for Growth – United Kingdom, Enhancing Rural Innovation in Scotland, United Kingdom (2023), COVID-19, productivity and reallocation: Timely evidence from three OECD countries (2021), The impact of COVID-19 on corporate fragility in the United Kingdom: Insights from a new calibrated firm-level Corporate Sector Agent-Based (CAB) Model (2021), Firm investments in skills and capital in the UK services sector (2020), What drives firm and sectoral productivity in the United Kingdom and in selected European countries? (2020), The UK Productivity Puzzle through the Magnifying Glass: A Sectoral Perspective (2018).

Raise productivity by encouraging public and private investment:

• Continue ambitious public investment as planned, and implement existing “Levelling Up White Paper” proposals to ensure it is well targeted, better streamlined, and with a special focus on improving productivity in lagging regions.
• Identify and reduce barriers to access funds for local authorities and provide capacity building measures to ensure lagging regions make use of available funds.
• Ensure long-term policy transparency and continuity of government programmes to reduce uncertainties for business investment.
• Enhancing framework conditions, especially land-use planning regulations, is necessary to enable the investments required to reach net zero.

Raise labour market participation and enhance the qualifications of the workforce to facilitate labour mobility towards “new” jobs:

• Increase funding to reduce the cost of good-quality childcare, in particular for under 2-year-olds, giving priority to low income households.
• Increase the cap on paternity pay and relate it to father’s income to provide incentives to level care responsibilities and to increase the labour market participation of women.
• Use statistical tools to target training to low skilled workers affected by digitalisation and the green transition to strengthen their skills to transit to new jobs.