Clearly, this is closely related to the output produced per worker - which is the most common measure of productivity. But it also depends on the number of people employed relative to the total population. Through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, output per capita in Canada increased more rapidly than productivity.
But over the past 10 years, it has fallen behind the growth in productivity. Canada’s lacklustre standard-of-living performance in the 1990s, which we have heard so much about, has less to do with slower productivity growth than with the fact that the proportion of the population that is actually employed has not been increasing.