MADISON, Wis.–In all of the other data packed into CUNA Mutual’s latest Trends Report on loan and membership trends, one data point may have escaped notice: just how much more productive credit unions have become in two decades.
“Back in 2000, it took on average 0.38 full-time credit union employees to manage every $1 million in assets,” the CUNA Mutual analysis states. “Today, that ratio stands at 0.2, a 47% improvement in productivity overall or 2.5% increase in productivity per year. Today there are 305,000 full-time employees working at credit unions managing $1,578,000 million in assets.
“The number of employees working at credit unions today would have been 599,640 (0.38 x 1,578,000) if credit union employees had the same level of productivity that they did back in 2000,” CUNA Mutual’s economists go on to note. “The net result is that 294,298 (599,640 – 305,341) jobs were not filled due to improvements in human and physical capital. Smaller asset size credit unions reported bigger improvements in productivity ratios over the last 18 years; however, larger credit unions are still more productive due to their economies of scale.”