Over the past decade or so, employment has increased by about 50 per cent - around 4 per cent a year. Increased part-time working and a shorter working week reduced this annual increase in labour producing goods and services to 3 per cent.
With regard to the second element in economic growth - productivity - our improvement, while somewhat less spectacular, is, nonetheless, quite satisfactory. The average annual increase in productivity, calculated on a GNP basis, was about 3½ per cent.