Germany labour productivity per hour worked
Germany labour productivity per hour worked stood at 101.22 EUR in 2025, according to Deutsche Bundesbank. It is one of the indicators in the National accounts (annual) table (Value · Annual), with a complete series running from 1991 to 2025. The complete series with an interactive chart, free to download.
This indicator in the National accounts (annual) table
| Indicator | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wages, labour costs and productivity | |||||||||||
| Labour productivity per hour worked by persons in employment, Whole economy | 101.22 | 100.16 | 100.51 | 101.71 | 101.64 | 100 | 99.04 | 98.26 | 97.82 | 95.84 | |
| Unit labour costs per unit on an hourly basis, Whole economy | 121.76 | 116.77 | 111.14 | 103.1 | 99.36 | 100 | 96.94 | 94.17 | 91.39 | 90.49 |
Understanding germany labour productivity per hour worked
Economic output generated during sixty minutes of active employment forms the foundation of this dataset. The calculation takes the total price-adjusted value added by the entire economy and divides it by the total number of hours actually worked by all employed persons. It serves as a focused efficiency gauge, ignoring how many people are on the payroll to concentrate entirely on the output yield of the time spent working. This distinguishes it from per-capita productivity, which is heavily distorted by shifts between full-time, part-time, and marginal employment contracts across different sectors.
Analysing this hourly efficiency rate involves adjusting for cyclical distortions that alter the relationship between staffing and production. In the immediate aftermath of an economic shock, firms frequently hoard labour by reducing working hours rather than firing staff, which buffers the hourly productivity calculation compared to headcount metrics. Year-on-year analysis is generally preferred to bypass the uneven distribution of public holidays and the standard summer slowdown in manufacturing. Revisions occur regularly as both the macroeconomic output figures and the complex employment volume estimates are reconciled with delayed administrative data.
Frequently asked questions
- Does this metric count the output of self-employed individuals?
- The underlying output and the hours worked encompass all persons in employment, covering both wage earners and the self-employed.
- Why is hourly productivity often viewed as more precise than per-person productivity?
- It eliminates the structural distortions caused by part-time work, isolating the actual economic yield of the time spent actively working.
- Can changes in raw material prices distort this productivity gauge?
- The metric uses price-adjusted gross domestic product, specifically designed to strip out the effects of fluctuating prices to measure pure volume efficiency.