Americans More Productive than Canadians

The latest figures from Statistics Canada show that Canada’s economic output per person is about 15 percent lower than America’s.

This is an improvement on 1998 when there was a 19 percent gap between the two countries.

There are two main reasons for the gap. These are:

• Canadians work 5 percent fewer hours each week than Americans.
• Americans produce more per hour worked than Canadians.

The gap is not closing because individual Canadian workers are becoming more productive. In fact, they are becoming less productive. As a result of falling unemployment, however, the “average” Canadian now works more hours than they did in 1998.

According to the OECD, the average number of hours worked per worker each year is 1,825 in the USA and 1,751 in Canada. (In the UK, the average number of hours worked each year is 1,668.)