Real labour productivity per person employed
- Eurostat dataset
- tesem160
- Reference period
- 2025
- Unit of measure
- index, 2015 = 100
Key estimates
- EU aggregate (2025): 100.0 index, 2015 = 100.
- Highest value: Ireland at 212.9 index, 2015 = 100; lowest: Serbia at 49.1 index, 2015 = 100.
- Cross-country mean 97.2 index, 2015 = 100, standard deviation 31.6, coefficient of variation 32.4% across 31 reporting countries.
- Aggregate change 2014→2025: +3.6% on a constant panel of 31 countries.
How is European labour productivity evolving? Eurostat dataset tesem160 reports real labour productivity per person employed for 31 reporting countries, with 2025 as the most recent period carrying broad coverage. The European aggregate stands at 100.0 index, 2015 = 100. Productivity growth is the only sustainable source of rising real wages.
The five highest values in 2025 are recorded by Ireland (212.9), Luxembourg (153.5), Norway (144.2), Belgium (129.7), Denmark (116.9), all expressed in index, 2015 = 100. At the opposite end of the distribution sit Serbia (49.1), Montenegro (53.0), Bulgaria (59.3), Greece (67.2), Latvia (70.3). The ratio between the highest and the lowest observation is 4.34, while the median country reports 92.0 index, 2015 = 100 against a mean of 97.2 index, 2015 = 100.
Dispersion is moderate: the standard deviation across countries is 31.6 index, 2015 = 100, giving a coefficient of variation of 32.4%. The mean sits above the median, which indicates that the distribution is pulled by the upper tail rather than being symmetric. Any European average quoted for this indicator therefore describes a synthetic country that few Member States resemble.
Between 2014 and 2025 the summed value across the 31 countries reporting in both periods moved by +3.6%. The largest relative increases are observed in Romania (+53.3%), Ireland (+45.2%), Bulgaria (+34.8%); the largest decreases, or the smallest increases, in Luxembourg (-12.8%), Greece (-12.5%), France (-6.9%). Because the panel is held constant, this change is not an artefact of countries entering or leaving the sample.
Higher values are the policy-preferred direction for this indicator, so the countries listed at the bottom of the distribution mark the effective size of the European gap: closing it to the level of the fifth-ranked country would require the lowest performer to move by 67.8 index, 2015 = 100. The estimates above are reproducible: the dataset identifier, filter dimensions and reference period are stated in the methodological note, and the series can be re-downloaded from the Eurostat dissemination API at any time.
Methodological note
Source: Eurostat, dataset tesem160 ('Labour productivity per person employed and hour worked (EU27_2020=100)'), extracted from the Eurostat dissemination API (JSON-stat 2.0) on the dataset update of 2026-07-27. Filter dimensions: no dimension filters applied. Unit of measure: index, 2015 = 100. Reference period: 2025. Geographic perimeter: national reporting units with two-character geo codes (31 countries with a non-missing observation); European and euro-area aggregates are excluded from the cross-country statistics and reported separately. Descriptive statistics (mean, median, population standard deviation, coefficient of variation) are computed unweighted over reporting countries. Change over time is computed on a constant panel: only countries with a non-missing observation in both the base and the reference period enter the calculation, which removes composition effects but may differ from the officially published aggregate. No imputation, seasonal adjustment or re-scaling has been applied beyond what Eurostat performs at source. Flagged provisional and estimated observations are retained as published.
Source data
The underlying series can be inspected and re-downloaded from the Eurostat data browser.