4 minute readAs the world marks International Equal Pay Day on 18 September 2025, the OECD is proud to unveil a new tool in the global effort to close gender gaps: the OECD Dashboard on Gender Gaps. This initiative is more than a data repository – it is a call to action, a mirror of persistent inequalities, and a roadmap for reform. The OECD Dashboard on Gender Gaps provides internationally comparable data covering all OECD countries to strengthen the monitoring and tracking of progress towards gender equality.
read more4 minute readAs the world marks International Equal Pay Day on 18 September 2025, the OECD is proud to unveil a new tool in the global effort to close gender gaps: the OECD Dashboard on Gender Gaps. This initiative is more than a data repository – it is a call to action, a mirror of persistent inequalities, and a roadmap for reform. The OECD Dashboard on Gender Gaps provides internationally comparable data covering all OECD countries to strengthen the monitoring and tracking of progress towards gender equality.
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5 minute readProductivity growth is central to economic development and competitiveness. The OECD Compendium of Productivity Indicators 2025 offers a comprehensive snapshot of productivity trends, focusing on key components like capital and labour inputs. In this blog post, we unpack the key findings for 2023 and 2024 and reflect on the way ahead.
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5 minute readProductivity is a key driver of economic growth and competitiveness. As such, internationally comparable indicators of productivity are central for assessing economic performance. One widely used productivity measure is multifactor productivity (MFP), which traditionally captures the efficiency with which an economy converts labour and produced capital, such as machines and buildings, into output. However, conventional MFP metrics disregard negative externalities of production, including greenhouse gas and other pollutant emissions, and neglect the use of natural capital, such as minerals.
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4 minute readProductivity is a core determinant of long-term economic growth, living standards, and international competitiveness. Policymakers and analysts rely on productivity trends to guide decisions on growth, competitiveness, and structural reforms. Discover how innovative nowcasting techniques harness machine learning and mixed-frequency data to track labour productivity in near real-time. This approach blends high-frequency indicators—like monthly surveys or industrial output—with more traditional quarterly data. By swiftly capturing changes in economic activity, it provides timely insights into productivity trends and potential turning points. Policymakers and analysts can then react faster, refining forecasts and adapting strategies in a rapidly shifting economy.
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4 minute readHuman capital, the stock of knowledge and skills embodied in people, is a key input in economic production. Changes in both the “quantity” and the “quality” of a country’s human capital stock influence economic growth and productivity performance. Traditional measures of labour input in economic growth and productivity analyses, such as total hours worked, focus solely on changes in the quantity of labour input, ignoring changes in the skill composition of the workforce. For example, these measures equate an hour worked by a highly experienced surgeon and an hour worked by a junior retail salesperson, disregarding their vastly different experience and skills.
Firms recognise that workers with different skills and experience are not perfect substitutes by paying them different wages. It is therefore possible to account for differences between workers by weighting their hours worked by their respective shares in total wages. Such measures are often referred to as Composition Adjusted Labour Input (CALI), Labour Services, or Quality Adjusted Labour Input (QALI). CALI measures provide an improved understanding of whether the average “quality” of labour is increasing or decreasing over time.
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4 minute readIn 2022, the economic environment deteriorated, with challenges associated with the aftermath of the pandemic compounded by emerging hurdles and rising global uncertainties. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine led to a widespread energy crisis. Globalisation showed signs of stalling, with global FDI flows falling by 12% in 2022, reflecting deteriorating economic and business conditions. Inflation in 2022 reached record levels, potentially deterring investment and hampering productivity growth by increasing firms’ operating costs and disrupting long-term planning. Labour markets were tight and the number of bankruptcies rose markedly during 2022, while firm entries remained flat. The 2024 edition of the OECD Compendium of Productivity Indicators takes a closer look at how productivity and related indicators evolved under these conditions in 2022 and how this environment affected longer-term productivity trends.
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4 minute readWhen the COVID-19 crisis hit the world economy in 2020, concerns arose that it would further dampen productivity growth in many OECD economies.
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