Sub-regional productivity: 2002 to 2020

Estimates for subregional labour productivity ^{[footnote 1]} are calculated by dividing output (gross value added, GVA) by a measure of labour input (total hours worked or jobs).

Estimates for Wales ^{[footnote 2]}

• GVA per hour worked (relative to the UK) was 84.3% in 2020, an increase of 0.2 percentage points over the previous year.
• This figure was the second lowest of the twelve UK countries and English regions.
• In 2020, GVA per job filled was 82.9% of the UK figure, an increase of 0.3 percentage points over the previous year.
• This figure was the lowest of the 12 UK countries and English regions.
• Estimates published in May 2022 show that GVA per head (relative to the UK) was 72.7%. This was the second lowest GVA per head of the twelve UK countries and English regions.

Sub-Wales estimates ^{[footnote 3]}

• Powys had the lowest GVA per hour worked of all the areas in the UK in 2020 (61.3% of the UK figure) and Conwy and Denbighshire as well as Gwynedd had the joint fourth lowest GVA per hour worked (69.9% of the UK figure).
• Powys had the second lowest GVA per job in the UK in 2020 (at 61.9% of the UK figure).
• Flintshire and Wrexham was the highest ranked Welsh area for both GVA per hour and GVA per job (at 94.1% and 94.9% of the UK figure respectively).

Footnotes

[1] GVA per hour worked is considered a more comprehensive indicator of labour productivity than GVA per job filled, as it accounts for different working hours and how those differ across regions. Note that both measures are better to assess productivity than GVA per head, which includes people not in the workforce and can also be heavily biased by commuting flows.
[2] The Office for National Statistics publish figures for Wales as part of the annual regional and sub-regional productivity in the UK and the quarterly labour productivity, UK release. The Wales figures in these two releases are calculated using the same methodology but are based on different GVA approaches. The Wales figures quoted in this headline are from the sub-regional productivity release to be consistent with the rest of the data used throughout this headline.
[3] International Territorial Levels (ITL) is the new UK geographies classification system. This has superseded the Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics (NUTS) classification system. ITL is a geographical classification that divides the UK into regions at three different levels (ITL 1, 2 and 3, respectively, moving from larger to smaller units). The Sub-Wales estimates above refer to ITL3.