Commercial sector
For subsectors of the commercial sector, the change in labour productivity can be determined relatively easily by measuring the value added (output) produced and how many working hours were needed to achieve that (input).
For other sectors, production cannot be measured directly. For example, production in education and the government is mainly estimated indirectly based on the sum of costs (wages and intermediate consumption). This means that inputs and outputs in these sectors cannot be seen independently of each other, so it is meaningless to determine labour productivity for these sectors.
A provisional estimate of changes in labour productivity for the economy as a whole was published earlier in the year, based on the first estimate of gross domestic product (GDP) and the total number of hours worked. Because this is a provisional estimate, the source data required for the breakdown of the commercial sector is not yet available.