Levels of productivity have increased throughout the whole world in recent years, but large disparities subsist between the industrialised countries and most other regions, even though many of them have started to plug the gap, according to a new report by the International Labour Organisation (“Key Indicators of the Employment Market”, fifth edition). The United States were still at the top of the list of productivity per person employed in 2006. The gap is still growing between them and most of the other developed economies. With 63.855 dollars of added value per person employed in 2006, the United States are still a long way ahead of Ireland (55.986 dollars), Luxembourg (55.641 dollars), Belgium (55.235 dollars) and France (54.609 dollars). The Norwegians, for their part, are the workers who do the most hours of work every year, with 37.99 dollars per hour worked, ahead of the Americans (35.63 dollars) and the French (35.08 dollars). The increase in productivity results mainly from the fact that businesses are better at combining capital, employment and technology, whereas a lack of investment in human resources (training and qualifications) and in equipment and technologies may lead to an under-use of labour potential in the world, the report emphasises. In Eastern Asia, where levels of productivity have seen the sharpest increases, doubling in 10 years, production per worker has risen from one eighth to one fifth of the level achieved by the developed countries between 1996 and 2006. In South-East Asia and the Pacific, productivity remains seven times lower than levels in the industrialised countries and is eight times less in Southern Asia. In the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, it is nearly 3 times lower than in the developed economies. In central and south-east Europe (outside the EU) and in the CIS, the level is 3.5 times lower and four times less in North Africa. Lastly, the greatest gap in is observed in sub-Saharan Africa, where added value per worker is 12 times lower than that of a worker in the industrialised world. (il)