1999 Multifactor Productivity Trends — 2001-04-10

Private Business, Private Nonfarm Business, and Manufacturing (Incorporating Corrected Estimates for Manufacturing) From 1998 to 1999, multifactor productivity rose 0.8 percent in the private business sector and 0.6 percent in the private nonfarm business sector, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported. Multifactor productivity is designed to measure the joint influences on economic growth of technological change, efficiency improvements, returns to scale, reallocation of resources, and other factors. Multifactor productivity, therefore, differs from the labor productivity (output per hour) measures that are published quarterly by BLS since it requires information on capital services and other data that are not available on a quarterly basis. Multifactor productivity increased for the eighth consecutive year in both the private business and private nonfarm business sectors, but at the lowest rates since 1995. The 1999 annual changes are summarized in tables A and C; further detail and historical measures are shown in tables 1 through 9.