European labor productivity as a share of productivity in the U.S. 1870-1990

In 1870, labor productivity in Western Europe was approximately 70 percent of labor productivity in the United States. This rate gradually fell over the next 80 years, to less than half of the U.S. rate by 1950. In Southern and Eastern Europe, productivity was less than half of Western Europe's rate and more than half a century behind. Over this period, much of Western Europe was devastated by two world wars; while the U.S.' industrial development was not hindered in the same way and structurally, the U.S. was largely untouched by the war. By the end of the century, Western Europe had mostly caught up with the U.S.. Although overall productivity in the EU in 1990 was 90 percent of the U.S.' rate, there were some individual countries, such as Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and France, where GDP per capita or productivity were actually higher than in the U.S..