Regional labour productivity is not one figure per region but two, and for a location decision the useful one is not the one usually quoted. The Statistical Office publishes productivity per employed person and per hour worked. The first is higher where more hours are worked; the second speaks about output per unit of time. The difference is not academic: three regions have an hourly productivity of an identical 22,6 € and differ by 457 € a year per person.
The frame: two forms of one indicator
Regional labour productivity in current prices is published in two variants and the series ends with 2023, that is two years earlier than most other regional indicators. Both variants are below, supplemented by an own ratio which shows how many hours worked stand behind the annual value per person.
| Region | Per person, € | Per hour, € | Derived hours per person |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slovak Republic | 42 641 | 26,3 | 1 621,3 |
| Bratislava | 58 911 | 35,6 | 1 654,8 |
| Trnava | 47 007 | 28,4 | 1 655,2 |
| Košice | 42 140 | 26,3 | 1 602,3 |
| Nitra | 39 113 | 23,7 | 1 650,3 |
| Trenčín | 36 636 | 22,6 | 1 620,9 |
| Banská Bystrica | 36 304 | 22,6 | 1 606,4 |
| Žilina | 36 179 | 22,6 | 1 600,8 |
| Prešov | 34 658 | 21,9 | 1 582,6 |
Why the common view of labour productivity is wrong
The usual use is simple: the region with higher productivity per person is called more efficient and ranked higher in a location assessment. The table does not support that procedure. The Trenčín, Banská Bystrica and Žilina regions have an identical hourly productivity of 22,6 €, but per person 36 636 €, 36 304 € and 36 179 €, a range of 457 €. The difference between them therefore does not arise from output per hour but from the number of hours.
The derived hours per person show it directly: 1 620,9 in Trenčín, 1 606,4 in Banská Bystrica and 1 600,8 in Žilina. The whole range across Slovakia runs from 1 582,6 in Prešov to 1 655,2 in Trnava, that is 4,6 %. Annual productivity per person carries this difference in time worked inside it, and whoever uses it as a measure of performance is comparing the length of the working year alongside performance.
The argument on data: the map changes when the denominator changes
Recalculation per hour changes not only the order but also the distances. The Bratislava region is 70,0 % above Prešov per person, but 62,6 % per hour. The Košice region has 26,3 € per hour, exactly the national value, and 42 140 € per person against the national 42 641 €, that is 501 € less — on the hour it is at the average, per person below it.
The same effect works in the opposite direction as well, and it is clearly visible on the region that commentary mentions as average. The Nitra region has 23,7 € per hour, which is 9,9 % under the national value, but a derived 1 650,3 hours per person, the third highest figure in the country. Its annual productivity of 39 113 € is therefore higher than the hourly value alone would suggest.
The way regions become indistinguishable changes too. Per person the closest pair is Trenčín and Banská Bystrica with a difference of 332 €, that is 0,9 % of the lower value, and right behind them Banská Bystrica and Žilina with a difference of 125 €. Per hour all three are identical. A region that can be told apart in one indicator is therefore the same in the other, and a decision built on a difference of 125 € a year per person rests on a few more hours being worked in the region.
What follows for a location choice
For a tenant planning a hall for a given quantity of output, the decisive figure is hourly productivity together with the shift regime, because that determines how many people and how much time a given volume requires. For a tenant planning a hall for a given headcount, the relevant figure is annual productivity per person, because that already contains the time actually worked in the region.
Those are two different projects with a different order of regions, and it therefore cannot be said that one region is „more productive“ without saying in which of these two senses. In three regions the first sense is entirely undiscriminating: at 22,6 € per hour the Trenčín, Banská Bystrica and Žilina regions offer no argument against one another in this indicator at all.
A third case is a borderline one and deserves its own sentence. The Košice region has an hourly productivity exactly at the national level of 26,3 €, but a derived 1 602,3 hours per person against the national 1 621,3. A region that is average per hour is therefore below average per person, and that without any difference in output per unit of time. For a tenant comparing the Košice region with the national average, the answer to the question of where it stands against that average depends solely on which of the two indicators is chosen.
Under what conditions this thesis fails
The first condition is a price one and concerns the same indicator in constant prices, which the office publishes only as an index against the previous year, not as a level. The series used here is in current prices, so differences between regions also contain differences in the output prices of individual branches. A region with a higher share of a branch whose prices rose faster will have higher nominal productivity without any change in volume. The nominal increase from 2019 to 2023 illustrates it: 33,1 % nationally, but from 26,8 % in Bratislava to 39,6 % in Košice. If those differences were mostly explained by prices, the thesis about hourly productivity as the better indicator loses part of its force, because both forms would be equally price-laden.
The second condition is structural. If the derived hours per person converge between regions, both indicators will begin to give the same order and distinguishing them will stop being necessary. A range of 4,6 % is today large enough to invert the order of neighbouring regions, but not large enough to change the position of Bratislava or Prešov.
The third condition is a temporal one. The series ends with 2023, while most other regional indicators on this site are for 2025. If the structure of time worked changed after 2023, this whole line of reasoning concerns a state of affairs from two years ago, and that is a limit no recalculation removes.
The fourth condition is sectoral. Productivity is published for the region as a whole, not for manufacturing or for transport and storage separately. A region with a large share of a branch with high value added per person will have a higher overall value regardless of what productivity is in the hall in question. This reasoning therefore holds for comparing regions with one another, not for estimating the productivity of a specific facility, and such an estimate cannot be made from this data.
The fifth condition is conceptual and the least obvious. Derived hours per person are not the hours worked by one employee but a ratio of two aggregates: value added divided by persons, and the same value added divided by hours. The first denominator includes persons working shorter hours, the second their hours actually worked. A region with a higher share of part-time work will therefore have a lower derived count of hours without anyone working a shorter day. The range of 4,6 % between regions thus measures a mixture of two things — the length of working time and the structure of contracts — and they cannot be separated in this series.
Sources and verification
| Indicator | Source | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Labour productivity per employed person | SU SR, DATAcube, table nu3801rr | Year 2023, current prices, updated 30. 1. 2026 |
| Labour productivity per hour worked | SU SR, DATAcube, table nu3801rr | Year 2023, current prices, the same series |
| Values for 2019 | SU SR, DATAcube, table nu3801rr | Used only for the nominal change 2019 – 2023 |
| Derived hours per person | Own calculation | Productivity per person divided by productivity per hour |
Difference of definitions. Productivity per person and productivity per hour are not two views of one figure: the first divides value added by the number of employed persons, the second by the number of hours worked. Their ratio is therefore not a measure of performance but a derived count of hours, and in the series itself it is not published. The date of the last update of the table is given in the collection overview. Both quantities are in current prices and do not account for differences in price levels between regions or between branches.
Conclusions
For 2023 labour productivity per employed person reached 42 641 € for Slovakia, from 34 658 € in Prešov to 58 911 € in Bratislava. Per hour worked it was 26,3 € for Slovakia, from 21,9 € to 35,6 €. The Trenčín, Banská Bystrica and Žilina regions have an identical 22,6 € per hour, although per person they differ by 457 €, and the difference arises from a derived count of hours that runs across the country from 1 582,6 to 1 655,2, that is by 4,6 %. Recalculation per hour at the same time compresses the gap between Bratislava and Prešov from 70,0 % to 62,6 %. For a location decision a single rule follows: the indicator is chosen according to whether the project is tied to the volume of output or to the number of people, and never according to which of the two forms gives a region a more favourable place. The thesis meanwhile stands or falls with the five conditions set out above — price, structural, temporal, sectoral and conceptual — and the temporal one is the hardest today, because the series ends with 2023.
Materiál má informatívny charakter a nepredstavuje právne, daňové ani finančné poradenstvo.