David, that productivity "data" for the government sector are close to complete nonsense has long been known. In fact, your StatsCan interlocutors told you the secret: "They acknowledged that their labour productivity numbers for government workers don’t actually reflect real-world outputs, but are based on production costs as “value added” proxies in place of outputs." That the "value added" (meaning wages) is taken to be the output shows the circularity of the measure.
Not that they have any choice. Government "output" is difficult to measure unless you do a micro-study, such as passports approved, backlogs reduced, etc., etc. In the aggregate there is little to hang your hat on. Such micro-measures can be highly useful to spot inefficiencies or improvements.
No-one should pay attention to the aggregate figures for the public sector.
The consequent problem for governments is that there doesn't seem to be any way to justify their employment bloat. But they just can't seem to give up the impulse to keep hiring.
That doesn't really follow. There may well be reasons. You have to look more deeply. My only point is that aggregate data about government sector productivity are close to nonsense because they don't have output in the denominator.
As an Albertan, I wish that I was more sanguine about our "top" ranking, particularly when I am dubious about the implied efficiencies based on anecdotal experience. Honesty, however, requires that I consider that my expectations may have changed and therefore making actual better results simply SEEM less impressive. Must ponder......
Now, having said that, as always, always, David, my hat is off to you for attempting to make sense of these topics and then putting the results into prose that I can (usually) follow. The "usually" is a reflection of my own deficiencies and not any attributable to you!
Well I'll grant you that this particular post was a bit more convoluted than most. But it's worth the effort if only for the chance to learn that some StatCan data isn't real!
I live in Saskatchewan. No surprises here. And I’m a former federal government employee.
Great data and analysis — thank you David 🙏
David, that productivity "data" for the government sector are close to complete nonsense has long been known. In fact, your StatsCan interlocutors told you the secret: "They acknowledged that their labour productivity numbers for government workers don’t actually reflect real-world outputs, but are based on production costs as “value added” proxies in place of outputs." That the "value added" (meaning wages) is taken to be the output shows the circularity of the measure.
Not that they have any choice. Government "output" is difficult to measure unless you do a micro-study, such as passports approved, backlogs reduced, etc., etc. In the aggregate there is little to hang your hat on. Such micro-measures can be highly useful to spot inefficiencies or improvements.
No-one should pay attention to the aggregate figures for the public sector.
The consequent problem for governments is that there doesn't seem to be any way to justify their employment bloat. But they just can't seem to give up the impulse to keep hiring.
That doesn't really follow. There may well be reasons. You have to look more deeply. My only point is that aggregate data about government sector productivity are close to nonsense because they don't have output in the denominator.
As an Albertan, I wish that I was more sanguine about our "top" ranking, particularly when I am dubious about the implied efficiencies based on anecdotal experience. Honesty, however, requires that I consider that my expectations may have changed and therefore making actual better results simply SEEM less impressive. Must ponder......
Now, having said that, as always, always, David, my hat is off to you for attempting to make sense of these topics and then putting the results into prose that I can (usually) follow. The "usually" is a reflection of my own deficiencies and not any attributable to you!
Well I'll grant you that this particular post was a bit more convoluted than most. But it's worth the effort if only for the chance to learn that some StatCan data isn't real!
You write, "... some StatCan data isn't real!"
Well, as the old saying goes, "Good enough for government work."