A research report from Queen’s Business School has found that the productivity gap in Northern Ireland has significantly widened, with its ranking dropping from seventh to 10th place out of the UK’s 12 regions.  

Northern Ireland now only outperforms the East Midlands and Wales in the UK and remains behind the Republic of Ireland where productivity is 8% higher than the UK average. Despite this decline in ranking, Northern Ireland's productivity still exceeds its pre-pandemic levels. 

The findings are detailed in the ‘Northern Ireland Productivity Dashboard 2024’, which shows how Northern Ireland performs in comparison to the rest of the UK’s regions. This is the third edition of the Dashboard, having first been published in 2022. 

In last year’s 2023 edition of the Dashboard, Northern Ireland had the largest productivity growth of any UK region moving to seventh position, however this improvement was not sustained.  

The 2024 Dashboard was created by Ruth Donaldson, Dr David Jordan, and Professor John Turner on behalf of the Northern Ireland Productivity Forum, based at Queen’s Business School.

The forum is part of The Productivity Institute, a UK-wide organisation that works across academia, business and policy to better understand, measure and enable productivity across the UK. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.  

The Dashboard shows how Northern Ireland performs across 18 different drivers of productivity relative to the UK average and other regions, and over time, highlighting where barriers to productivity growth exist, their severity, and whether progress is being made to address them.  

The 2024 Dashboard showed that 14 of the 18 drivers are below the UK average, with only two better, and the remaining two either equal to the UK average, or below but above the UK median.  

Key findings

• Northern Ireland’s productivity improvement during the Covid-19 pandemic has been only temporary, with Northern Ireland’s productivity gap to the UK level widening again, although it is still ahead of its pre-pandemic performance; 
• Four council areas – Derry City & Strabane, Mid Ulster, Lisburn & Castlereagh, and Mid & East Antrim – saw the largest improvement in their productivity compared to their performance before the Covid-19 pandemic;  
• R&D expenditure has continued to increase in Northern Ireland, placing it third out of six regional groupings across the UK, performing better than the North of England, Scotland and Wales; 
• The number of individuals with no or only entry level qualifications has continued to improve, but Northern Ireland still lags behind other regions, with one major contributing factor being out-migration or the ‘brain drain’; 
• Access to gigabit-capable internet remains above the rest of the UK; 
• The political uncertainty faced by SMEs when running their business has improved over the short-term, although Northern Ireland performs the worst of any UK region. 

Speaking about the report, Dr David Jordan from Queen’s Business School said: “It is important that the public be informed of this, as increasing productivity is key to higher wages and better living standards for people across Northern Ireland. Low productivity is the central issue that explains Northern Ireland’s persistently poor economic performance, and productivity is the biggest long-term challenge that policymakers face.  

“Productivity has been chosen as one of four economic priorities by the economy minister Conor Murphy, emphasising its importance. The Dashboard will help policymakers identify the key areas where improvements are needed to raise productivity in Northern Ireland.”   

Ruth Donaldson from Queen’s Business School added: “The Dashboard highlights the key drivers of productivity, and how Northern Ireland performs across each of these. By communicating this in a clear, visual way, it identifies where improvements have been made, but also emphasises where weaknesses continue to exist within Northern Ireland’s economy, and where further progress is needed.   

“The fact that 14 of the Dashboard’s indicators are red demonstrates the need to improve the drivers of productivity in Northern Ireland’s economy.” 

Professor John Turner from Queen’s Business School said: “Improving productivity requires all of government to work together. The new draft Programme for Government provides an opportunity for the Northern Ireland Executive to make progress in improving the key drivers of productivity.” 

The 2024 Northern Ireland Productivity Dashboard is available here: https://www.productivity.ac.uk/research/northern-ireland-productivity-dashboard-2024/