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Output per Worker

GDP per person employed, six major economies, 2000 to today

Unit
Thousand PPP $ per worker
Frequency
Annual
Coverage
2000–2025
Evidence Quality
High

Output per worker in PPP terms — the US and Germany at the frontier, China's six-fold rise still a third of the way there.

World Bank WDI · GDP per person employed (constant 2021 PPP $) · SL.GDP.PCAP.EM.KD

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GDP per worker (thousand PPP $)

Constant 2021 PPP $, in thousands, per employed person.

01

Question

How much does each worker produce — and is the productivity gap closing?

02

Evidence

Output per worker — GDP divided by the number of people employed — is the deepest measure of an economy's development, because in the long run living standards track productivity. The United States sits at the frontier, near $154k per worker in PPP terms, with Germany just behind; the two have long defined the leading edge. The story below is China, whose output per worker rose roughly six-fold from about $7.5k to $46k — a historic gain that still leaves it around a third of the US level.

03

Observation

Read level, slope and timing together.

This is output per worker, not per hour: the US leads partly because Americans work more hours than Germans, whose hourly productivity is comparable.

04

Assessment

  • The US and Germany define the frontier — near-parity in 2000, with the US pulling modestly ahead since.
  • China's six-fold rise is the great catch-up, yet it remains roughly a third of the US level.
  • India starts lowest and gains, but the gap to the frontier — over six-fold — barely narrows in relative terms.
05

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