Im asking because everywhere i look at the UK, i see the complete opposite. A perfect example is HS2, the price has more than doubled and they delivered far less than half.
Traditionally, it's been measured using the Labour Force Survey which has become less reliable as the number of people willing to respond is now so much lower than it was in the 20th century.
(HS2 is a pathological case, where the problems are driven by an unprecedented level of political meddling. Contrast it with Crossrail, 3.5 years late, cost £18.5bn rather than £14.8bn - and a humongous success when it finally launched, beating all expectations despite the effects of Covid and the shift to WFH, and already planning expansion to meet demand. We're generally bad at estimating the value of infrastructure and would likely unleash a wave of productivity improvements if we were willing to invest a little more up-front and not micromanage projects to death)
How do they measure this ?
Im asking because everywhere i look at the UK, i see the complete opposite. A perfect example is HS2, the price has more than doubled and they delivered far less than half.
Traditionally, it's been measured using the Labour Force Survey which has become less reliable as the number of people willing to respond is now so much lower than it was in the 20th century.
I can't read the FT article, but there've been various sources recently suggesting that an upward revision of productivity stats is probably justified: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/aug/24/uk-producti...
(HS2 is a pathological case, where the problems are driven by an unprecedented level of political meddling. Contrast it with Crossrail, 3.5 years late, cost £18.5bn rather than £14.8bn - and a humongous success when it finally launched, beating all expectations despite the effects of Covid and the shift to WFH, and already planning expansion to meet demand. We're generally bad at estimating the value of infrastructure and would likely unleash a wave of productivity improvements if we were willing to invest a little more up-front and not micromanage projects to death)