Meaning & use
productivity
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Meanings
noununcountablebusiness
The amount of work or goods produced compared with the time, money or effort used to produce them.
Grammar: Not used with an or in the plural: worker productivity is rising.
Patterns
- productivity of something
- increase productivity
The factory improved productivity by reorganizing the assembly line.
Economists track national productivity to see how fast living standards might rise.
Longer hours do not always lead to higher productivity.
noununcountabletechnical
The ability of land, a farm or an ecosystem to produce crops or living matter.
Grammar: Used mostly with land, soil or ecosystems: soil productivity.
Patterns
- productivity of something
Heavy rainfall raised the productivity of the grassland.
Farmers use fertilizer to boost the productivity of their fields.
Ocean productivity depends on nutrients rising from deeper water.
Common combinations
- boost productivity
- A quieter office helped boost productivity.
- improve productivity
- The new tools improved productivity across the team.
- labor productivity
- Labor productivity has fallen for two years.
- productivity gains
- The company reported strong productivity gains.
- drop in productivity
- The heat wave caused a drop in productivity.
Synonyms and how they differ
- output
- Output is the amount produced, while productivity compares that amount with the resources used.
- efficiency
- Efficiency is about wasting little, whereas productivity is about how much is produced for the input.
- yield
- Yield is usually the amount of a crop or a profit, and it does not compare output to effort.
- performance
- Performance is broad and covers quality as well as quantity, unlike productivity.
Opposites
Word family
- productive adjective
- producing a lot, or achieving a good result
- productively adverb
- in a way that achieves much
- produce verb
- to make or create
- unproductive adjective
- not producing much
Commonly confused: productivity or production?
productivity vs production
Production is the act or total amount of making something, while productivity measures how well resources are used to make it.
Practice
A company produces the same goods with fewer workers and less time. What has increased?
Choose one answer.
Productivity measures output compared with the input of time and workers, so more output per input means higher productivity. The other options are not described.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “productivity”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.