Westpac Chief Economist on labour productivity decline in Australia

Westpac Chief Economist Lucy Ellis has claimed the employment growth in Australia over the past year and a half has been largely driven by the non-market sector. “It's in industries like health and social care, education and public admin and defence and it happens that each job in those industries, each hour worked in those industries, produces less GDP on average than all of the jobs in the market sector,” Ms Ellis told Sky News Business Editor Ross Greenwood. “That's not saying they're worthless, it's just how things are priced, how GDP is measured. “Because we've increased the share of employment in those industries, in those specific jobs that are care work, that are relatively lowly paid, we've managed to drag down the average GDP per hour worked, which is what all economists mean when they talk about productivity. “So we've produced a lot of jobs, but we don't have that much GDP for the show for it.”