Produktivitetsutvikling i norsk matsektor

Abstract

This chapter examines productivity changes in the Norwegian grocery industry. We analyze three levels in the vertical chain: the food industry, wholesale and distribution, and the retail level. We provide new, updated numbers on labor productivity change up until 2017. Generally, and in line with all other industry and service sectors, labor productivity growth has decreased the last ten years. The retail sector (and partly the primary producers, not analyzed in detail here) have the highest productivity growth by far, but the food industry has increased its productivity growth the last decade, following forty years of low growth. The wholesale and distribution level seems to have a weaker productivity growth in the last ten years. We point to various sources of productivity growth in the grocery industry, and discuss potential implications of the observed productivity growth patterns. Our analysis shows that this kind of productivity analysis is very sensitive to data like choices of price indexes, labor measures and aggregation levels, and clearly point to weak nesses in publicly available information and a lack of sufficiently detailed data on this industry.