June 7, 2000 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Factory productivity increases at 7.3-percent annual rate in first quarter
Productivity, as measured by output per hour,
increased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 7.3 percent in
manufacturing in the first quarter. Output increased 6.8 percent and hours
of all persons fell 0.5 percent.
[Chart data—TXT]
The first-quarter productivity increase was smaller than the
10.8-percent increase recorded in the fourth quarter of 1999. Output and
hours in manufacturing, which includes about 17 percent of U.S.
business-sector employment, tend to vary more from quarter to quarter than
data for the more aggregate business and nonfarm business sectors.
Unit labor costs in manufacturing decreased 3.4 percent in the first
quarter, after falling 5.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 1999. Unit
labor costs—the cost of the labor input required to produce one unit of
output—are computed by dividing labor costs in nominal terms by real
output.
These data are a product of the BLS Quarterly
Labor Productivityprogram. Data
are subject to revision. Additional information is available in "Productivity
and Costs, First Quarter 2000,"
news release USDL 00-164.
Of interest
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