Walking hand-in-hand alongside R&D is a productive workforce. Let’s take a look:
Eurostat reports this metric a bit differently. It measures the productivity of each country and establishes a EU average, shown in the chart as 100. It then compares all 16 countries against the average and reports it as a figure that indicates above- or below-average performance. For example, Portugal is rated at 55.6, meaning it is 44.4% below the EU average; Netherlands is 21.8% above.
Quoting Eurostat,“GDP per hour worked is intended to give a picture of the productivity of national economies expressed in relation to the European Union (EU-16) average.” The exercise is somewhat self-referential, but gives a good idea of relative competitiveness within the EU. And here again we see the PIGS bringing up the rear.
