June 08, 2007 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Manufacturing multifactor productivity in 2005

Multifactor productivity in the manufacturing sector rose 3.4 percent in 2005.

[Chart data—TXT]

This is the fourth consecutive year that multifactor productivity rose in manufacturing.

The multifactor productivity gain in 2005 reflected a 3.5-percent increase in sectoral output and a 0.1-percent increase in combined inputs, which, while modest, was the first increase since 1999. Capital services declined 0.3 percent in 2005, after having also declined in 2004. Hours declined 1.1 percent in 2005, materials rose 1.0 percent and purchased business services rose 1.3 percent.

These data are from the BLS Multifactor Productivity program. Productivity data are subject to revision. To learn more, see "Multifactor Productivity Trends in Manufacturing, 2005" (PDF) (TXT), news release USDL 07-0822. Multifactor productivity measures the joint influences of technological change, efficiency improvements, returns to scale, reallocation of resources, and other factors on economic growth, allowing for the effects of capital and labor.