2001 Multifactor Productivity Trends in Manufacturing — 2004-02-10

The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor today reported multifactor productivity data--output per unit of combined inputs for the manufacturing sector and for durable goods, nondurable goods, and two-digit (SIC) manufacturing industries through the year 2001. 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 laborproductivity (output per hour) measures that are published quarterly by BLS since it requires information on capital services and other data that are available only on an annual basis. The decline in multifactor productivity in manufacturing was the first in 10 years. The 2001 annual changes are summarized in table A; further detail and historical measures are shown in tables 1 through 3. This is the last release of manufacturing productivity measures based on the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system.