I try to find an economical survey conducted by The Conference Board of USA 
comparing productivity gains in USA an in Europe, more specifically in Belgium

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Clarification of Question by pierre-ga on 21 Apr 2002 03:33 PDT

Actually, I do not search the publishing reference of that survey wich is 
available on the www.conference-board.org. I try to find the detailed figures 
with international comparisons about productivity gains between USA, Japan and 
european countries, including Belgium. I heard that survey shows that Belgium 
is close to the USA in that performance.

Dear Pierre,

Thank you for your inquiry.

I believe the following report contains the information you are looking for.

Bureau of Labor Statistics
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ForeignLabor/supptab.txt
International Comparisons of Hourly Compensation Costs for Production Workers 
in Manufacturing, 1975-2000

There are several detailed tables of labor information for 29 countries.

1 - Indexes of hourly compensation costs for production workers in 
manufacturing, 29 countries or areas and selected economic groups, 1975-2000

2 - Hourly compensation costs in U.S. dollars for production workers in 
manufacturing, 29 countries or areas and selected economic groups, 1975-2000

3 - Hourly compensation costs in national currency for production workers in 
manufacturing, 29 countries or areas, 1975-2000

4 - Indexes of hourly direct pay for production workers in manufacturing,
29 countries or areas and selected economic groups, 1975-2000

5 - Hourly direct pay in U.S. dollars for production workers in manufacturing, 
29 countries or areas and selected economic groups, 1975-2000

6 - Hourly direct pay in national currency for production workers in 
manufacturing, 29 countries or areas, 1975-2000

7 - Indexes of pay for time worked for production workers in manufacturing,
29 countries or areas, 1975-2000

8 - Table 8.   Pay for time worked in U.S. dollars for production workers in 
manufacturing, 29 countries or areas, 1975-2000

9 - Pay for time worked in national currency for production workers in 
manufacturing, 29 countries or areas, 1975-2000

10 - Total direct pay as percent of total hourly compensation costs for 
production workers in manufacturing, 29 countries or areas, 1975-2000

11 - Pay for time worked as percent of total hourly compensation costs for 
production workers in manufacturing, 29 countries or areas, 1975-2000

12 - Other direct pay as a percent of hourly compensation costs for production 
workers in manufacturing, 29 countries or areas, 1975-2000

13 - Social insurance expenditures and other labor taxes as a percent of hourly 
compensation costs for production workers in manufacturing, 29 countries or 
areas, 1975-2000

14 - Exchange rates, 29 countries or areas, 1975-2000

I hope this information was helpful to you.

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Clarification of Answer by roguedog-ga on 21 Apr 2002 20:50 PDT

For more information on foreign labor statistics go to:

http://www.bls.gov/fls/home.htm

This site features an interactive (Java) custom table creator from the Bureau 
of Labor Statistics data!

Even if the answer does not match perfectly my request, it helped me to 
discover some US statistical sources.

Note that there is a controversy about U.S. productivity data.  The
so-called hedonistic price adjustments, especially for computer
equipment, have distorted some productivity numbers.  There have been
good articles about this subject in the past year in The Economist. 
Also Gene Epstien's column in Barron's has touched on this several
times.

Over simplifying, there is an implied price adjustment for computers
to take into accoutn the "quality" improvement.  A 500 MHz Pentium
system of 2000 is assigned a much higher price than a 90 Mhz Pentium
system of 1995.