On Wed, Dec 18, 2002 at 09:36:16PM -0500, Erik Reuter wrote: > My first reaction is -- every company produces a measurable thing (or is > working towards it). That thing is money = revenue = sales. Everything > is fungible to an economist or a finance guy. So, to first order, I > would think productivity might reasonably be measured in dollars of > revenue per worker.
My first reaction was more or less correct, I discovered after doing a little checking. Only it is hours worked rather than workers that is commonly used. Basically, productivity is a subset of GDP divided by hours worked. Here's a portion of a FAQ (more info at the link) from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics http://stats.bls.gov/lpc/lprfaq.htm 1. What is productivity and how is it measured by BLS? Productivity is a measure of economic efficiency which shows how effectively economic inputs are converted into output. Productivity is measured by comparing the amount of goods and services produced with the inputs which were used in production. Labor productivity is the ratio of the output of goods and services to the labor hours devoted to the production of that output. 2. What is the most commonly used productivity measure? Output per hour of all persons--labor productivity--is the most commonly used productivity measure. Labor is an easily-identified input to virtually every production process. In terms of cost, it represents about two-thirds of the value produced. 3. Why don't we measure productivity for particular groups, such as white collar workers? BLS productivity measures are based on aggregate national measures of outputs and inputs. These data sources do not provide the information BLS would need to construct occupational or state measures. There are also conceptual obstacles to disaggregating these national measures. For example, the output of a factory may require both white collar and blue collar inputs, and it is therefore unclear how to allocate the output to the two groups separately. 4. Is output in your output per hour measure for the business sector equal to Gross Domestic Product (GDP)? Business sector output is based on GDP, but includes only a subset of the goods and services included in GDP. The business sector comprises about 80 percent of GDP since it must exclude those portions of the economy for which productivity measures cannot be constructed. General government, the output of the employees of nonprofit institutions and private households, and the rental value of owner-occupied real estate are excluded. 5. How are labor hours calculated? The primary source of hours and employment data is the BLS Current Employment Statistics (CES) program, which provides data on total employment and average weekly hours of production and nonsupervisory workers in nonagricultural establishments. The Hours at Work Survey is used to convert the CES hours to hours at work by excluding all forms of paid leave. For nonmanufacturing sectors, all employees are assumed to work the same hours as nonsupervisory employees. In manufacturing, average weekly hours for nonproduction workers are developed from BLS studies which provided data on the regularly scheduled workweek of white-collar employees. Because CES data include only nonagricultural wage and salary workers, data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) are used for farm employment as well as for nonfarm proprietors and unpaid family workers. Government enterprise hours are developed from the National Income and Product Account estimates of employment combined with CPS data on average weekly hours. -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
