September 3, 1999 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Unit labor costs in manufacturing
decline the most in Korea, Taiwan, Japan in 1998
Unit labor costs plunged by 37.4
percent in Korean manufacturing in 1998. The next steepest declines were also in East
Asia—manufacturing unit labor costs expressed in U.S. dollars fell by 15.2 percent in
Taiwan and 7.2 percent in Japan.
[Chart data—TXT]
Of the 14 countries in the analysis, all except two
experienced drops in manufacturing unit labor costs in 1998. Unit labor costs rose by 5.9
percent in the United Kingdom and by 0.2 percent in the United States.
In these comparisons, unit labor costs are measured on a
U.S. dollar basis and are strongly affected by changes in exchange rates. In a number of
cases, exchange rate depreciation was large enough to overcome an increase in
national-currency unit labor costs and result in a drop in costs when expressed in U.S.
dollars.
These data are a product of the BLS Foreign Labor
Statistics program. Data are preliminary and subject to revision. Additional
information is available in "International
Comparisons of Manufacturing Productivity and Unit Labor Cost Trends, 1998," news
release USDL 99-235. 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. Unit labor costs also can be expressed as the ratio of hourly compensation to
labor productivity.
Of interest
Spotlight on Statistics: National Hispanic Heritage Month
In this Spotlight, we take a look at the Hispanic labor force—including labor force participation, employment and unemployment, educational attainment, geographic location, country of birth, earnings, consumer expenditures, time use, workplace injuries, and employment projections.
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