Last year, I wrote and presented a paper at the Canadian Transportation Research Forum that expanded the official productivity statistics for Ontario from 1997 back to 1985.

The method I developed increased the sample size of productivity statistics for Ontario by an additional 12 years (essentially doubling the sample). The surprising result is that productivity slowdowns, such as the one we have been experiencing recently, are the norm according to the history of productivity statistics. Looking back to the period 1985 to 1993, I see a significant stagnation in the growth rate of productivity, similar in magnitude to the decline since 2008. It is the nature of productivity growth to be unpredictable. Therefore, it is highly likely that the recent productivity slump does not represent a profound shift in the underlying dynamics of the discovery of new ideas or human technological progress.

If you would like to read the full paper, you can download it from here: Canadian Transportation Research Forum

Figure 1: Index of Ontario’s Productivity growth between 1985 and 2010. Ontario's productivity index