A detailed analysis of the productivity performance of Canadian food manufacturing

Over the entire 1961-2007 period, growth in capital services intensity and multifactor productivity growth were responsible for 1.05 and 0.97 percentage points of the 2.37 per cent labour productivity growth rate experienced by the food manufacturing industry (alternatively, 44.8 and 41.5 per cent of growth). [...] Capacity utilization, therefore, cannot explain the acceleration of growth in food processing productivity in the post 2000 period, though it certainly contributed to the strong performance of the subsector relative to manufacturing and the industrial total. [...] Growth in average years of education attained by workers was faster in the food manufacturing subsector (0.55 per cent per year) than in the total economy (0.39 per cent), and more than doubles the growth rate in the manufacturing sector (0.23 per cent). [...] The proportion of workers with a university degree increased at an average annual rate of 4.73 per cent in food manufacturing, above the 4.03 per cent attained in manufacturing and well above the 2.89 per cent increase in the total economy. [...] Given the prominence of food manufacturing to the economy, productivity trends in the subsector are an important contributor to productivity trends in the wider economy, and productivity is the major determinant of living standards.