A consistent measure of hours worked for international productivity comparisons

Hourly labor productivity levels from the national accounts cannot be compared across countries, as national statistical offices use different data sources and methodologies to calculate hours worked. I compute a new, internationally comparable measure of hours worked for 25 OECD countries, and discuss the implications for productivity rankings. •Hourly labor productivity levels from the national accounts cannot be compared across countries.•I compute a new, internationally comparable measure of hours worked for 25 OECD countries.•Compared to the official data, my data give a different ranking of countries in terms of hourly productivity.•My data also show that productivity dispersion in the OECD is smaller than according to the official statistics.