Jim Thompson wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6976084.stm

A couple of problems with this sort of statistic. First:

"The ILO productivity figure is found by dividing a country's total
output in a year by the number of people employed."

Unfortunately, there's no way of telling what the cost of that output
should be and whether or not it has properly been accounted for. They
don't go around quoting 'Net' National Product but 'Gross' National
Product. Take Boeing for example. They sell a $100 million airplane and
the GNP is credited with $100 million. Its not evident from that number
that a good part of the value of the product is foreign made and should
properly be credited to its country of origin.

Another problem:

They are measuring output in dollars. Certainly a $10 American made
widget will appear to be 10x the 'output' of a $1 Chinese widget, even
though the widgets may be functionally identical.

--
Paul Hovnanian
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Dyslexics have more fnu.