Industry Productivity Measures

Current news release

• Productivity of Industry (Annual)

Historical time series available via gopher

• PI - Industry Labor Productivity Index

Data available

• Annual indexes of output per hour, output per employee, output, employment, and hours.
• Annual indexes of industry multifactor productivity which include labor, capital, and intermediate purchases inputs.

Coverage

• Output per hour measures for 178 industries in manufacturing, mining, transportation, public utilities, trade, and services. Unpublished measures for 459 manufacturing industries.
• Output indexes based on physical output or on deflated value of shipments; employment and hours indexes make use of production and nonproduction workers, and for some nonmanufacturing industries also includes the self-employed and unpaid family workers.
• Multifactor productivity measures, relating output to the combined inputs of capital, labor, and intermediate purchases, for seven industries in manufacturing and transportation.

Source of data

• Annual news release.
• Output data from various Federal Government sources and trade associations.
• Labor input data from BLS establishment and household surveys, and the Bureau of the Census.
• Capital and intermediate purchases inputs for multifactor productivity based on measures prepared by BLS from data of the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of the Census.

Reference period

• Calendar year.

Forms of publication

• Annual news release.
• Annual bulletinùProductivity Measures for Selected Industries and Government Services.
• Unpublished measuresùavailable on requestùfor manufacturing industries.
• Data files on diskette and tape.
• Articles in Monthly Labor Review analyze indexes for newly covered industries.
• Historical data in Handbook of Labor Statistics.

Uses

• Economic indicator.
• Aid economic policymakers in assessment of economic changes in individual industries.
• Analysis of overall economic activity.
• Studies of the relationships among productivity, wages, prices, and employment by industry.
• Projections of industry employment levels.
• Analysis of trends by newspaper and periodical publishers.
• Assists forecasters in analyzing economic growth in industries and the economy.

Major research in progress

• Continued development of productivity measures in service, trade, finance, transportation and manufacturing industries.
• Development of multifactor measures for selected industries.

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