Productivity And Costs — 1996-05-16

The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor today reported preliminary productivity data--as measured by output per hour of all persons--for the first quarter of 1996. The seasonally-adjusted annual rates of productivity change in the first quarter were: 2.8 percent in the business sector, and 2.6 percent in the nonfarm business sector. In both sectors, first-quarter productivity gains were larger than gains recorded in the third and fourth quarters of 1995. 6.3 percent in manufacturing, 8.2 percent in durable goods manufacturing, and 3.8 percent in nondurable goods manufacturing. The productivity increase in manufacturing in the first quarter was the largest since the first quarter of 1994. Output and hours in manufacturing, which includes about 18 percent of U.S. business-sector employment, tend to vary more from quarter to quarter than data for the more aggregate business and nonfarm business sectors. First-quarter measures are summarized in table A and appear in detail in tables 1 through 5.