ABSTRACT
It is not at all uncommon to find some very sophisticated arguments surrounding the concept of productivity – what it is and how it should be measured can get very complicated sometimes. At least in the conceptual sense, labour-intensive service industries have it rather easy for the simple reason that the demand for labour is direct. Not for them the productivity of a machine. Instead, labour is demanded for what it can produce directly – clean a room, serve a drink, escort a tour etc. There are two very important implications of this, which are:
That productivity is essentially about physical productivity and human capacity with all the scope for variation that that implies.
That the origin of demand for labour is sales. A pattern of sales or forecast pattern of sales is simultaneously a pattern of demand for labour.
