Growth of Labour Productivity in Irish Manufacturing 1953 - 1967 1 By KIERAN A

The mam concern of this paper is with longer term differences among individual manufacturing industries in the growth of labour productivity and how such differences are associated with relative movements in output, labour earnings, unit costs and prices Certain relationships between the movements of these variables m Irish manufacturing industries will be examined and the results compared with similar work by other authors using data for other countries Particular emphasis will be laid on the strong positive association between the growth rates of productivity and output what has now become known as the "Verdoorn Law" and a brief explanation of this relationship is offered m the final section of the paper The starting point of the analysis is 1953 because from that year on consistent data are available for the relevant variables for forty-four individual manufacturing industries The terminal year is the latest year for which the data are available Before going on to the individual industries, however, it may be helpful to examine briefly the overall rates of change in output and productivity as revealed by the data for total manufacturing and for ten groups of industries.