bulksalty t1_j6o0q4b wrote on January 31, 2023 at 6:10 PM

Usually when economists are discussing productivity, they're referring to the measure GDP divided by labor hours. So, for a therapist it's client billings per hour of therapist's time, for a bus driver it's passenger revenues, for a teacher it's pro rata tuition or the share of property taxes spent on education assigned to them.

czbz t1_j6oflz7 wrote on January 31, 2023 at 7:41 PM

Yes - but in all of those cases you'd subtract the costs of the input to the business, so you only count the money that goes to the companies own staff & owners as its productivity.

E.g. to estimate how much value the therapist produces you'd add up the feels their clients pay but then you'd subtract what they pay for room rent, what they pay to their superviser etc. For the bus company you'd subtract their cost of buying or renting busses etc ect. If a business is paying more for its inputs than it takes in revenues then its productivity would be negative.