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Two BLS programs produce Labor Productivity and Costs (LPC) measures for sectors of the U.S. economy.
The Major Sector Productivity and Costs program publishes quarterly and annual measures of output per hour and unit labor costs for the U.S. business, nonfarm business, and manufacturing sectors. These are the productivity statistics most often cited by the national media.
The Industry Productivity and Costs program publishes annual measures of output per hour and unit labor costs for detailed U.S. industries.
Notice
The Productivity and Costs: Second Quarter 2009 Preliminary news release issued on the morning of Tuesday, August 11, 2009, contained errors in Tables 1 through 5 and Appendix tables 1 and 2 that have been corrected. The series that required correction were compensation per hour, real compensation per hour, unit labor costs, and unit non-labor payments. A corrected version of this release has been posted.
For Your Information
NOTICE The Productivity and Costs news release on August 11, 2009, incorporated revised source data, including revised National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce, on July 31. More...
Changes in the presentation of the text section of the Productivity and Costs news release will be incorporated in the next edition published on September 2, 2009. There will be no changes to the format and content of the tables. More...
August 11, 2009
Productivity increased 6.4 percent in the nonfarm business sector during the second quarter of 2009 as unit labor costs
fell 5.8 percent (seasonally adjusted annual rates). In manufacturing, productivity increased 5.3 percent while unit
labor costs rose 0.5 percent.
More...
(HTML)
(PDF)
May 20, 2009
Labor productivity (output per hour) rose in 66 percent of the detailed
service-providing and mining industries studied in 2007, about the same
proportion as in 2006. Unit labor costs increased in 70 percent of the
industries, compared to 76 percent in 2006.
Full Text »
Current Economic News Releases
- Productivity and Costs (HTML) (PDF)
- Productivity and Costs by Industry
- Selected Service-Providing and Mining Industries, 2007 (HTML) (PDF)
- Wholesale Trade, Retail Trade, and Food Services and Drinking Places Industries, 2007 (HTML) (PDF)
- Manufacturing Industries, 2006 (HTML) (PDF)
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Archived
Publications
- NEW "Technical Information About the Major Sector Productivity and Costs Methods" (HTML) (PDF 58 KB) This document describes the labor productivity measures that BLS publishes for the major sectors of the U.S. economy, as well as the methodology used to calculate these measures. February 2008.
- "Productivity Measures: Business Sector and Major Subsectors", Chapter 10 of the BLS Handbook of Methods, BLS Bulletin 2490, April 1997, pp. 89-102.
- "Industry Productivity Measures, Chapter 11 of the BLS Handbook of Methods", BLS Bulletin 2490, April 1997, pp. 103-109.
- Note on the Differences Between the Quarterly Hourly Compensation Measures and the Employment Cost Index (ECI), January 2007.
- Construction of Employment and Hours for Self-employed and other Nonfarm workers and for all Farm workers, using Current Population Survey data for primary and secondary jobs." (PDF 106K), March 2006.
- "New Service Industry Productivity Measures," (PDF 31K) Report 993, February 2006
- "Construction of Average Weekly Hours for Supervisory and Nonproduction Wage and Salary Workers in Detailed Industries" (PDF 151K), August 2005.
- "Industry productivity trends under the North American Industry Classification system" (PDF 87K), by Matthew Russell, Paul Takac, and Lisa Usher, Monthly Labor Review, November 2004, pp.31-42.
- "Construction of average weekly hours for supervisory and nonproduction wage and salary workers in private nonfarm establishments" (PDF 46K), October 2004.
- "New Service Industry Productivity Measures," (PDF 30K) Report 979, September 2004.
- "Alternative measures of supervisory employee hours and productivity growth" (PDF 273K), by Lucy P. Eldridge, Marilyn E. Manser, and Phyllis Flohr Otto, Monthly Labor Review, April 2004.
- "The Effect of Outsourcing and Offshoring on BLS Productivity Measures" (PDF 32K), March 26, 2004.
- "New Transportation and Service Productivity Measures", (PDF 38K) Report 964, January 2003.
- "Unit Labor Costs for Selected Industries, 1987-97," (PDF 86K) Report 939, November 1999.
- "BLS completes major expansion of industry productivity series, (PDF 300K) by John Duke and Lisa Usher, Monthly Labor Review, September 1998, pp. 35-51.
- "The BLS Productivity Measurement Program," (PDF 95K), by Edwin R. Dean and Michael J. Harper, Discussion Paper presented at the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth: New Directions in Productivity Research, March 20-21, 1998.
- "Improvements to the Quarterly Productivity Measures" (PDF 400K), by Edwin R. Dean, Michael J. Harper, and Phyllis Flohr Otto, Monthly Labor Review, October 1995.
- "Hours at work ratios derived from the Employment Cost Index, 2001-2003" (PDF 689KB), Brief description of the Bureau of Labor Statistics new ratios of hours at work to hours paid and reasons for the discontinuation of the Hours at Work Survey.
- Archive of MLR Articles on Productivity and Technology.
- NEW The 1987, 1988, and 1989 indexes of labor productivity (output per hour), output per worker, employment, and hours for NAICS 3341 and NAICS 3344 have been corrected. The updated series reflect corrections to erroneous employment and hours data included in the measures published on March 20, 2008.
- Beginning with the release of manufacturing industry data for 2006, labor productivity and related indexes and rates of change are available on this web site for all industries for which BLS maintains productivity measures. To view the data, please see the Industry Productivity and Costs links under Get Detailed Productivity and Costs Statistics and Tables and Charts Created by BLS.
- Conversion to NAICS
Other BLS Programs
Other Useful Links
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