What does the pledge mean? 

In its 2024 election manifesto the Labour party talked about seeing productivity grow “in every part of the country”, but it’s not immediately clear how this will be assessed.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) produces information on productivity growth in the UK. The two standard measures for this are output per worker and output per hour worked, which is the ONS’s preferred measure of productivity. It publishes ‘flash estimates’ for the UK’s productivity every quarter, which may be revised later. These productivity estimates aren’t broken down by region, and the ONS said productivity is “a long-term measure, so it is more robust to compare against the quarter a year ago, instead of quarter-on-quarter”.  

Once a year, the ONS publishes regional productivity data. However, there’s a delay on this data—for example in 2024, data for 2022 was published, and in 2025 the data for 2023 will be published. This regional data looks at output per hour worked, and includes data on productivity growth for ‘subregions’ as well as local authorities. 

The pledge doesn’t make clear if the government will be looking at regional, subregional or local authority data. We’ve asked the government what data it will use to track the pledge, and for a specific definition of what it means by “every part of the country”, and will update this page if we receive these details.

A Treasury spokesperson told Full Fact: “The government has established the Growth Mission to deliver growth across the country, with regular mission boards chaired by the Chancellor making the decisions required to deliver. The government will set out metrics for the growth mission in due course.”

In the meantime, the ONS regional productivity figures appear to be the best measure, despite the lag in the data, and because the data for the regions covers “every part of the country”. While headline productivity figures for the country as a whole could demonstrate growth, it’s possible at the same time that individual regions of the UK could see a decline.

The pledge doesn’t specify a timescale, so we’ll look at productivity for the duration of this parliament.

What progress has been made?

It’s too soon to say. The ONS releases data for regional productivity growth once a year. However, as we’ve mentioned this data is backdated, meaning we don’t expect to get data that tracks regional productivity for the year 2024 until 2026. Data for this year would reflect six months of a Conservative government and six months of a Labour government, so we won’t get data for Labour’s first full year in office (2025) until 2027. 

Although we don’t yet have any regional data, some national data may also be relevant, though it is provisional and subject to revision.

The ONS published its first ‘productivity flash estimate’ covering the Labour government on 15 November 2024. Across the UK its estimate for Q3 2024 (July-September) was that output per hour worked (the ONS’s preferred measure) decreased by 1.8% compared to the same quarter in 2023. This data doesn’t include any regional breakdown, but the fact there was a fall in productivity on this measure nationally suggests there must have been a fall in at least one region too.

The same ONS national data showed output per worker increased by 0.3% over the same time period.