2012 Multifactor Productivity Trends in Manufacturing — 2014-08-21

Manufacturing sector multifactor productivity increased at a 0.6 percent annual rate in 2012, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This increase offset the 0.5-percent decrease in 2011. The multifactor productivity gain in 2012 reflected a 3.3-percent increase in output and a 2.7-percent increase in combined inputs. (See table A, table 1.) Multifactor productivity measures the change in output per unit of combined inputs. Multifactor productivity in manufacturing is designed to measure the joint influences on economic growth of technological change, efficiency improvements, returns to scale, reallocation of resources, and other factors, allowing for the effects of capital, labor and intermediate inputs (energy, materials, purchased business services). Multifactor productivity measures differ from labor productivity (output per hour worked) measures that are published quarterly by BLS because multifactor productivity measures include information on capital services and intermediate inputs. Also, data needed to construct multifactor productivity are not available on a quarterly basis.