Interprovincial differences in GDP per capita, labour productivity and work intensity, 1990-2003

Together, these factors—how many people in the total population are available for work, the percentage of these who find employment, the hours worked per employed person, and the productivity of the hours worked—can be combined mathematically using an identity to relate each and all of these factors to GDP per capita in a region. [...] This identity consists of components representing labour productivity, the intensity of work effort, the employment rate, and the share of the population in the labour force. [...] Part of the observed differences in GDP per capita in current dollars can be explained by the differences in work intensity that arise from the combined differences in hours worked per employee and the number of employees per member of the population aged 15 and over. [...] In contrast, the Atlantic Provinces that generally rank among the lowest in terms of GDP per capita levels are also the provinces where the working-age population devotes less than the national average to working time.6 While there are substantial differences across provinces in the hours worked per person aged 15 and over, there is less difference in terms of the demographic component (population [...] Most of the interprovincial differences in the intensity of work effort (hours worked per capita) comes from the employment ratios (employment to population aged 15 and over—a proxy for the potential labour force) rather than from the intensity of hours worked (hours worked per employee) or from the demographic component—the ratio of the population of working age (15 and over) divided by total pop