United Nations: After a gap of several decades, India, China and Pakistan figure in the list of countries that have achieved growth in productivity in 2002, which is topped by the US, according to a new study by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

While India, China, Pakistan and Thailand in Asia registered slight increase, productivity of the US accelerated in 2002, surpassing Europe and Japan in terms of annual output per worker for the first time since World War II, the study says.

In Key Indicators of the Labour Market (KILM), the ILO notes that part of the difference in output per worker was due to the fact that Americans worked longer hours than their European counterparts.

Workers in the US put in an average of 1,815 hours in 2002, compared to major European economies, where hours worked ranged from around 1,300 to 1,800. In Japan, hours worked dropped to about the same level as in the US, it adds.

The KILM findings show that growth in productivity per person worldwide accelerated from 1.5 per cent during the first half of the 1990s to 1.9 per cent in the second half.

Most of this growth was concentrated in industrialised economies (the US and some European Union countries), and some in Asia (India, China, Pakistan and Thailand). In Africa and Latin American economies, available data showed declines in total economy productivity growth since 1980.

PTI