Major Sector Productivity & Costs

Productivity and costs measures are published for six major sectors: Business, nonfarm business, nonfinancial corporations, total manufacturing, durable goods manufacturing, and nondurable goods manufacturing. For each sector, measures of industry analytic ratios (such as productivity and unit labor costs) are available, as well as the basic data (such as output, hours, and compensation) on which they are based.

Output data are from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Federal Reserve Board. Compensation data are from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment and average weekly hours are selected from the BLS establishment survey and, where necessary for the farm sector and for the self-employed, from the BLS labor force survey. The labor input measure is then converted to the hours-at-work concept using results of a special annual survey conducted for this purpose.

There are approximately 282 Major Sector Productivity series available on the LABSTAT database. Series for business and nonfarm business begin in 1947, those for manufacturing in 1987, and those for nonfinancial corporations in 1958. Series are available quarterly and annually. Quarterly measures are based entirely on seasonally adjusted data. For some manufacturing series, only annual averages are available.

The base period for the indexes is 2005 = 100. All percent changes are calculated using index numbers rounded to three decimal places. Indexes are stored to three decimal places and percent changes are stored to one decimal place. Updates are performed near the beginning of the second and third month of each quarter, reflecting new data from the preceding quarter. All revisions to source data are reflected in the following release.

References: BLS Handbook of Methods, Chapter 10, "Productivity Measures: Business Sector and Major Subsectors", BLS Bulletin 2490 (April 1997). "New Sector Definitions for Productivity Series", Monthly Labor Review, October 1976, pp. 40-42. "Improvements to the Quarterly Productivity Measures", Monthly Labor Review, October 1995, pp. 27-32.