User Guide for Statistics Canada's Annual Multifactor Productivity Program

Abstract

The Canadian Productivity Accounts (CPA) of Statistics Canada maintain two multifactor productivity (MFP) programs. The Major Sector Multifactor Productivity Program develops the indexes of MFP for the total business sector and major industry groups in the business sector. The Industry Multifactor Productivity Program or the Industry KLEMS Productivity Program develops the industry productivity database that includes MFP indexes, output, capital (K), labour (L), energy (E), materials (M) and services (S) inputs for the individual industries of the business sector at various levels of industry aggregation.

This paper describes the methodologies and data sources that are used to construct the major sector MFP indexes and the industry productivity database (or the KLEMS database). More specifically, this paper is meant to: provide a background of the major sector MFP program and the industry KLEMS productivity program; present the methodology for measuring MFP; describe the data sources and data available from the MFP programs; present a quality rating of the industry KLEMS productivity data; and describe the research agenda related to the MFP program.

Keywords: Multifactor productivity, productivity, productivity growth

JEL Classification: D24, J24, O47