Wales one of the least productive parts of the UK

Productivity is a way of measuring how well an economy is doing

Wales had one of the worst productivity rates in the UK in 2019, new figures show.

Office for National Statistics (ONS) data shows the amount produced in Wales for every hour worked was 4.4% lower than the average of the twelve UK nations and regions.

Only Northern Ireland performed worse - 9.6% lower than the UK average.

The figures highlight how fragile the Welsh economy was when the pandemic hit.

Looking at the amount of goods or services produced by each job, Wales was the lowest in all of the UK.

On this measure, it was 5.5% lower than the average of all the UK regions.

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That average is heavily influenced by the dominant effect of London on productivity, however only five areas were below London.

Wales' weak performance is in sharp contrast with Scotland, which was 10% more productive than the UK average.

Wales did have the steepest growth between 2018 and 2019, at 2.5%, but that followed a fall of 7.3% the previous year.

What is productivity?

Productivity is a way of measuring how well an economy is doing.

It calculates how many goods are made and services delivered in an area in a set time. That is then divided by the number of jobs, or the number of hours that people have worked in that time.

Higher productivity tends to suggest higher levels of skills and higher wages.

But it's a blunt instrument.

Increasingly, it is being questioned if it is an effective method to tell us if people are thriving in an economy.

That's because it does not take into account things we might do for free - such as caring for someone or DIY repairs.

It won't tell us about the impact on the environment, from for instance the well-being benefit of going for a walk, while it does count the manufacture of a pill to help anxiety.

Productivity can still be useful to see how one area - or entirely different areas - compare at different points in time.

But it is only one measure of the health and wealth of our economy.