Title: Productivity in services: analysing the crises of the 21st century in the EU

Authors: Alejandro Alcalá-Ordóñez; Francisco Alcalá-Olid; Rui Alexandre Castanho; Pablo Juan Cárdenas-García

Addresses: Department of Economics, University of Jaen, 23071 Jaén, Spain ' Department of Economics, University of Jaen, 23071 Jaén, Spain ' Faculty of Applied Sciences, WSB University, 41-300 Dabrowa Górnicza, Poland; College of Business and Economics, University of Johannesburg, P.O. Box 524 Auckland Park, Johannesburg 2006, South Africa ' Department of Economics, University of Jaen, 23071 Jaén, Spain

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyse labour productivity in the services sector in the two crises of the 21st century in EU countries. To do so, firstly, a typology of the branches that make up the tertiary sector is established, and secondly, shift-share analysis is used to explain the factors that justify productivity growth. The periods analysed are 2007-2014, corresponding to the Great Recession, and 2019-2021, for the crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The results obtained show a strong decline in the second crisis in the activities most affected by the restrictive measures imposed in the pandemic and a confirmation of the traditional hypothesis of reallocation of employment from the less productive sectors to the more productive ones, although this pattern is not unanimous in all activities or in all the countries studied.

Keywords: labour productivity; services; structural change; tertiarisation; shift-share.

DOI: 10.1504/PIE.2023.132684

Progress in Industrial Ecology, An International Journal, 2023 Vol.16 No.1/2/3, pp.4 - 29

Received: 24 Feb 2023
Accepted: 21 Apr 2023
Published online: 07 Aug 2023 *

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