Tech named most productivity industry in new study

The UK’s IT and information services industry has made the biggest leap in productivity, a new report has found – growing by 13.71% year-on-year (YOY) since Q4 2022. 

It comes as Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt unveiled his ambitions to grow UK productivity in his recent speech at the Centre of Policy Studies.

Business management software specialists ECI Software Solutions analysed ONS labour productivity statistics to build its Business Productivity Index, highlighting which industries have been most affected by the current economic climate.

Since the ONS started measuring labour productivity, the average lifetime output from data and IT firms sits at 74.79, while in 2022 it reached 121.1. This is good news for the UK’s drive toward becoming a technology and science superpower, with more than three million people working in UK tech, making the sector reach a combined market value of $1 trillion last year.

How different industries fared: 

Of the 20 industries included in the study, five sectors of manufacturing suffered a productivity loss. 

Manufacturers of transport equipment products took the biggest productivity hit, falling by 7.98% compared to the same period last year. 

Basic metals and fabricated metal products manufacturing fell by 7.98% – although this sub-sector’s lifetime average for productivity is the highest on the list at 100.48 points. 

Food products, beverages and tobacco producers saw a marginal productivity boost of 2.02% – and was the only manufacturing sub-sector on the list to see an increase in productivity.

Commenting on the index, Chris Fisher, VP of EMEA, LBMH at ECI Software Solutions said:

“There’s a real push to improve productivity across the UK, getting us up to speed with some of our global peers. Recent statistics show that, across all industries, productivity is still at the same level as it was before the pandemic – though it has managed to successfully rise above an inevitable dip in 2020.

“Manufacturing in particular seems to be particularly hard hit at the moment, likely to be still reeling from the effects of Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine yet it also poses the most exciting opportunity. Data and IT services are becoming more and more accessible – and in turn, manufacturing businesses are well placed to make the most of the innovations coming out of the sector to help it work smarter in the future.

“This is one of the reasons why interest is growing around tools such as business management software, and we hope that manufacturing leaders will seize the opportunity to see vast productivity improvements enabled by tech.”

View the Business Productivity Index online here.