Canada Lags the US When It Comes to Productivity 🐢

What we’re showing

GDP per capita for the US, Canada, and OECD (average).

Key takeaways

• GDP per capita roughly represents the amount of goods and services available per person.
• The US has demonstrated stable growth, with a brief dip during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Canada is struggling to keep up, even showing a decline in several years.

Context

One reason for Canada’s weaker performance is its lackluster R&D spending, which represented 1.7% of GDP in 2021. This is significantly lower than America’s share of 3.4%.

In fact, the OECD believes that Canada will be the worst performing advanced economy for the rest of this decade, and even possibly to 2060.