E
conintersect: Nonfarm business sector labor productivity increased at a 2.6 percent annual rate during the fourth quarter of 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This was the “revised” release for the 4Q2011.
Econintersect was hard pressed to find any change to the original release analyzed. (see analysis here)
In the original analysis, Econintersect remained critical of the BLS definition of “productivity”.
There is no control if the unit of labor actually produces the exact same product with less work. Major components can be outsourced (that were previously produced in house) – and the final product instead of being produced is simply assembled. This does not meet the technical Industrial Engineering definition of productivity improvement, but is the simple accounting definition used by the BLS.
