2002 Multifactor Productivity Trends — 2005-02-01

From 2001 to 2002, multifactor productivity increased 1.9 percent in the private business sector and 2.0 percent in the private nonfarm business sector, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Multifactor productivity is designed to measure the joint influences of economic growth on technological change, efficiency improvements, returns to scale, reallocation of resources, and other factors, allowing for the effects of capital and labor. Multifactor productivity, therefore, differs from labor productivity (output per hour worked) measures that are published quarterly by BLS since it includes information on capital services and other data that are not available on a quarterly basis. Multifactor productivity in the private business and nonfarm business sectors showed the fastest rate of growth since 1992. The 2002 annual changes are summarized in table A, and further detail and historical measures are shown in tables 1 through 6.