Labor Productivity and Costs

Productivity and Costs

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...
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Productivity and Costs by Industry: Selected Service-Providing and Mining Industries

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)
• Subscribe to the BLS News Service -- receive BLS economic news releases by e-mail.
• Schedule of Upcoming Releases

Archived

• Archived Productivity and Costs Releases (1993 forward)
• Archived Productivity and Costs by Industry

LPC Databases

Database Name	Special Notice	Top Picks	One Screen	Multi- Screen	Tables	Text Files
Tutorials: For help, try these tutorials
Major Sector Productivity and Costs Index
Industry Productivity and Costs

More Tools

• Series Report--Already know the series identifier for the statistic you want? Use this shortcut to retrieve your data.
• Text files (FTP)--For those who want it all. Download a flat file of the entire database or large subset of the database.
• Major Sector Productivity and Costs
• Industry Productivity and Costs
• Superseded historical SIC measures for manufacturing, durable manufacturing, and nondurable manufacturing sectors, 1949-2003.

LPC Tables

• UPDATED Productivity Growth by Major Sector, 1947-2008. Bar Chart
• Industry Labor Productivity and Costs Data Tables.
  • Important Information
  • Industry Productivity and Costs: Indexes
  • Industry Productivity and Costs: Annual Rates of Change.
  • Superseded Historical SIC Industry Labor Productivity and Costs Indexes.
• Information Supporting Major Sector Productivity and Costs Hours.
  • Supplementary Information Used to Calculate Hours Data for Major Sector Productivity and Costs Series
  • Hours-Worked to Hours-Paid Ratios
  • Supervisory worker to Nonsupervisory Worker Average Weekly Hours Ratios

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

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How is productivity defined?
2. Why is productivity measurement important?
3. How is productivity measured by BLS?
4. What is the most commonly used productivity measure?
5. What are "unit labor costs"?
6. Why can't I find a productivity measure for the total economy?
7. How are labor hours calculated?
8. What is included in compensation?
9. How are changes in output measured for specific industries?

All LPC FAQs »

Other BLS Programs

• Multifactor Productivity--annual indexes for industries and major sectors of the economy that relate output to labor, capital, and--in some cases--other inputs
• International Labor Comparisons--comparative information by country on productivity and unit labor costs; compensation; labor force, employment, and unemployment; and consumer prices.
• International Technical Cooperation --conducts training in labor statistics for international participants and coordinates international requests for BLS services including technical experts and short-term visits to BLS.
• Government Productivity Archive
• Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National)--monthly national data by detailed industry on employment, hours, and earnings of workers on the payrolls of nonfarm establishments.
• Producer Price Indexes--monthly data on changes in the selling prices received by domestic producers of goods and services.

Other Useful Links

• Bureau of the Census
• Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)