Labour Productivity: A Comparative Analysis of the European Union and United States, 1994–2007

This article confirms that labour productivity in the European economies has continued to slow down in recent years. U.S. productivity growth has been higher than in the EU, but only since 2001. At the same time, both economies have modified previous employment performance: EU employment growth is now higher than in U.S. This article proposes that productivity growth be explained by demand dynamics, and investment in particular, not forgetting the influence of employment, along with other factors such as new technologies.