Two decades of productivity growth in poultry dressing and processing, (EXCERPT), Monthly Labor Review Online, April 1987

Two decades of productivity growth
in poultry dressing and processing

Ziaul Z. Ahmed and Mark Sieling

Output per employee hour in the poultry dressing and processing industry rose at an average annual rate of 2.9 percent between 1963 and 1985—slightly higher than the rate for all manufacturing, 2.3 percent.¹ Output increased 5.2 percent a year and employee hours, 2.3 percent. This long-term trend in productivity masks four distinct periods during which annual rates changed markedly. These rates moved as follows:

	Poultry	Manufacturing
1963-85 .............................	2.9	2.3
1963-70 .........................	.9	1.6
1970-76 ..........................	2.7	2.7
1976-80 ..........................	2.0	1.1
1980-85 ..........................	3.7	3.9

Prior to 1970, poultry processing was a predominantly manual operation, although some mechanization, such as killing machines, was introduced in the 1960s. Increases in output during this period nearly matched those in employee hours. In the early 1970s, automated eviscerating and cutting machines were widely installed, and helped hold down employee hours even as the output of poultry products increased. Output per employee hour jumped to about three times the annual rate registered in the 1960s. However, by the late 1970s, most of the productivity gains stemming from this wave of automation had been realized, and output gains were often matched or exceeded by increases in employee hours. (See table 1.)

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Footnotes

1 The poultry dressing and processing industry consists of two segments, poultry dressing plant, designated as SIC 2016 by the 1972 Standard Industrial Classification Manual of the Office of Management and Budget; and poultry and egg processing, SIC 2017, SIC 2016 consists of establishments primarily engaged in slaughtering and dressing poultry for sale or for use in the same establishment in further processing, including cooking, deboning, canning, freezing, and so forth. SIC 2017 embodies establishments primarily engaged in preparing processed poultry products from purchased carcasses. Establishments primarily engaged in the cutting up and resale of purchased fresh carcasses are classified in the trade industries. SIC 2017 also include establishments which dry, freeze, or break eggs, (This portion of the SIC is scheduled to become a separate SIC.); The cleaning, oil treatment, packing, and grading or eggs are classified in SIC 5144.

Average annual rates of change are based on the linear lest squares of the logarithms of the index numbers. Extensions of the indexes will appear in the annual Bureau of Labor Statistics bulletin, Productivity Measures for Selected Industries.

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