productivity

productivity — noun

1. a measure of how much work or output is completed in relation to the time, effor

1.nounC1
Definition

a measure of how much work or output is completed in relation to the time, effort, and resources used to do it

Example

The factory manager was pleased when productivity rose twenty percent after the new machines arrived.

rise in productivity — common pattern with percentage

Japan experienced a steady rise in productivity during the nineteen-eighties as its technology sector grew.

Common collocations
  • increase / boost / improve / raise productivity
  • high / low / declining productivity
  • productivity growth / gains / levels
  • labour / workforce / employee productivity
  • productivity of + noun phrase
Synonyms
  • efficiency

    broader term focusing on minimising wasted time or resources; productivity emphasises output volume over input

  • output

    refers only to the total quantity produced, not the ratio to inputs

  • work rate

    more informal, typically used for individual workers rather than companies or economies

Antonyms
  • inefficiency

    focuses on wasted effort or resources rather than low output per input

Grammar Patterns

increase / boost / improve + productivity

productivity + of + noun phrase

possessive + productivity

Usage Note

Uncountable noun; does not normally take an article. Frequently appears with verbs such as increase, boost, improve, raise, measure, or track. Can refer to an individual worker, a team, a company, an industry, or a national economy.

Common Mistakes

The factory increased its productivity from 500 units to 800 units.
The factory increased its production from 500 units to 800 units.
Productivity measures efficiency (output per unit of input), not total output. Use 'production' for the total quantity of goods made.
There are many productivities in different sectors.
There are different productivity levels across sectors.
Productivity is uncountable and is not used in the plural.

Word family

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

Productivity, efficiency, and output all relate to how much work gets done, but each focuses on a different aspect. Productivity measures output relative to the input (time, labour, or resources) — it answers 'how well are we using our resources?' Efficiency similarly looks at the ratio of useful work to wasted effort, but applies more broadly to machines, energy use, or processes. Output is simply the total quantity produced, with no reference to inputs — a factory can have high output (many goods made) yet low productivity (needing too many workers to make them). Throughput is narrower: it measures how much passes through a system in a given time, like packages sorted per hour in a warehouse. For instance: 'The team raised productivity by reorganising the assembly line' (better use of labour hours), versus 'The team raised output by hiring more people' (more total goods, same or worse efficiency).

productivity ↗efficiency ↗output ↗throughput

Common collocations

Nouns

Adverbs

Phrases

  • increase productivity
  • boost productivity
  • improve productivity
  • measure productivity
  • decline in productivity

Prepositions

Etymology

LatinEnglish

Productivity is formed from the adjective 'productive' (from Latin 'productivus', meaning 'able to bring forth') and the noun suffix '-ity'. The Latin root 'producere' combines 'pro-' ('forward') and 'ducere' ('to lead'). The word entered English in the early 1800s, first used in economic writing to describe the relationship between inputs and the goods produced.