Are we really so bad?

The UK continues to languish behind the rest of the G7 in terms of its quoted productivity performance – yet my personal experience is that performance of the UK labour force has risen remarkably over the last few years.  This suggests that either I am mistaken (certainly a possibility as mine is only anecdotal evidence) or the official figures are in some way ‘wrong’. 

Official figures measure GDP per worker or per hour worked – but what happens to outsourced work.  Are those hours worked counted? Is that contribution to GDP counted? Do other countries count figures in the same way? Has anyone carried out any recent research into the compilation of these comparative figures?  How does a shift from manufacturing to services affect the figures? 

I think a review/overhaul might be in order?