Productivity in banking, how's that faring? The theory says spending on staff as a proportion of all operational costs in banking should decline as industry productivity increases.Ratios in the low 40 per cent range (and near enough to always less than 50 per cent) were common in the quarterly APRA data on the industry. Or they were from when the series started in 2014 until 2010.Back in 2004 it cost A$16 billion a year to hire everybody working in banking in Australia.The payroll of Australian banking now costs a whopping $27 billion.All the other costs, another $27 billion.And profit too (a cost, of course), that happens to be $27 billion as well.To quote Jonathan Mott from UBS on an earlier cut of APRA data, "it seems an extraordinary amount to run an industry."