Charting International Labor Comparisons - Gross Domestic Product

Chart 2: Real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and per person employed (2013)

Gross domestic product (GDP) per person employed is a general indicator of productivity, while GDP per capita is an indicator of the overall wealth of a country. Increases in productivity signal potential for increases in a country’s standard of living. Historically, overall productivity and wealth have tended to grow together for all countries shown. Countries that gravitate toward the upper left of the chart have higher productivity (GDP per person employed) relative to their wealth (GDP per capita) than countries that gravitate to the lower right. In 2013, for example, emerging economies such as South Africa, Turkey, and the Philippines had higher productivity relative to wealth. In contrast, productivity was relatively lower than wealth in advanced economies, including Singapore, Switzerland, and Norway.

Chart 1: Share of world gross domestic product, selected economies (1980–2013)

Gross domestic product (GDP) is a measure of a country’s economic output. China’s share of world GDP increased steadily during the past three decades, from approximately 3 percent in 1980 to over 17 percent in 2013. By 2001, China’s GDP had surpassed Japan’s. As a percentage of total world GDP, the United States, Western Europe, and Japan each declined slightly over the last two decades, partly due to China’s growth. India’s share of world GDP also grew from 2 percent in 1980 to over 5 percent in 2013, closing in on Japan’s share of GDP. The rest of the world’s share of world GDP declined steadily between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, but recovered somewhat from 2000 to 2010.