Economic News Release

				TECHNICAL NOTES
				
Labor Hours: Hours data for the labor productivity and cost measures 
include hours for all persons working in the sector—wage and salary 
workers, the self-employed and unpaid family workers.  The primary source 
of hours and employment data is the BLS Current Employment Statistics 
(CES) program, which provides monthly survey data on the number of jobs 
held by wage and salary workers in nonfarm establishments.  The CES also 
provides average weekly paid hours of production and nonsupervisory 
workers in these establishments.  Weekly paid hours are adjusted to hours 
at work using data from the National Compensation Survey (NCS).  The BLS 
Hours at Work survey, conducted for this purpose, was used for earlier 
years.  The Office of Productivity and Technology estimates average weekly 
hours at work for nonproduction and supervisory workers using information 
from the Current Population Survey (CPS), the CES, and the NCS.
     Data from the CPS are used for farm labor, nonfarm proprietors, and 
nonfarm unpaid family workers.  Estimates of labor input for government 
enterprises are derived from the CPS, the CES, and the National Income and 
Product Accounts (NIPA) prepared by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) 
of the Department of Commerce.
     The CES measures jobs, counting a person who is employed by two or 
more establishments at each place of employment. In contrast, the CPS 
features measures of employment that count each person only once and 
classify each person according to his or her primary job; hours worked at 
all jobs by that person accrue to his or her primary job.  However, the 
CPS also collects more detailed information on employment and hours worked 
at primary jobs and all other jobs, separately.  The BLS productivity 
measures use the more detailed information on employment and hours to 
assign all hours worked to the correct industrial sector and avoid 
duplicating hours data from the CES.

Output: Business sector output is a chain-type, current-weighted index 
constructed after excluding from gross domestic product (GDP) the 
following outputs: general government, nonprofit institutions, and private 
households (including owner-occupied housing). Corresponding exclusions 
also are made in labor inputs. Business output accounted for about 77 
percent of the value of GDP in 2005. Nonfarm business, which excludes 
farming, accounted for about 76 percent of GDP in 2005.
     Annual indexes for manufacturing and its durable and nondurable goods 
components are constructed by deflating current-dollar industry value of 
production data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census with deflators from the 
BLS.  These deflators are based on data from the BLS producer price 
program and other sources.  The industry shipments are aggregated using 
annual weights, and intrasector transactions are removed.  Quarterly 
manufacturing output measures are based on the index of industrial 
production prepared monthly by the Board of Governors of the Federal 
Reserve System, adjusted to be consistent with annual indexes of 
manufacturing sector output prepared by BLS.  Durables include the 
following 3-digit NAICS industries: wood product manufacturing; 
nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing; primary metal manufacturing; 
fabricated metal product manufacturing; machinery manufacturing; computer 
and electronic product manufacturing; electrical equipment and appliance 
manufacturing; transportation equipment manufacturing; furniture and 
related product manufacturing; and miscellaneous manufacturing. 
Nondurables include: food manufacturing; beverage and tobacco product 
manufacturing; textile mills; textile product mills; apparel 
manufacturing; leather and allied product manufacturing; paper 
manufacturing; printing and related support activities; petroleum and coal 
products manufacturing; chemical manufacturing; and plastics and rubber 
products manufacturing.
     Nonfinancial corporate output is a chain-type, current-weighted index 
calculated on the basis of the costs incurred and the incomes earned from 
production.  The output measure excludes the following outputs from GDP: 
general government; nonprofit institutions; private households; 
unincorporated business; and those corporations classified as offices of 
bank holding companies, offices of other holding companies, or offices in 
the finance and insurance sector. Nonfinancial corporations accounted for 
about 50 percent of the value of GDP in 2005.
     
Productivity: These productivity measures describe the relationship 
between real output and the labor time involved in its production. They 
show the changes from period to period in the amount of goods and services 
produced per hour. Although these measures relate output to hours at work 
of all persons engaged in a sector, they do not measure the specific 
contribution of labor, capital, or any other factor of production. Rather, 
they reflect the joint effects of many influences, including changes in 
technology; capital investment; level of output; utilization of capacity, 
energy, and materials; the organization of production; managerial skill; 
and the characteristics and effort of the work force.

Labor Compensation: Estimates of labor compensation by major sector, 
required for measures of hourly compensation and unit labor costs, are 
based primarily on employee compensation data from the NIPA, prepared by 
the BEA.  The compensation of employees in general government, nonprofit 
institutions and private households are subtracted from compensation of 
domestic employees to derive employee compensation for the business 
sector. The labor compensation of proprietors cannot be explicitly 
identified and must be estimated.  This is done by assuming that 
proprietors have the same hourly compensation as employees in the same 
sector.  The quarterly labor productivity and cost measures do not contain 
estimates of compensation for unpaid family workers.  
      
Unit Labor Costs:  The measures of unit labor costs in this release 
describe the relationship between compensation per hour and productivity, 
or real output per hour, and can be used as an indicator of inflationary 
pressure on producers.  Increases in hourly compensation increase unit 
labor costs; labor productivity increases offset compensation increases 
and lower unit labor costs. 

Presentation of the data:  The quarterly data in this release are 
presented in three ways; as index number series where 1992=100, as percent 
changes from the corresponding quarter of the previous year, and as 
percent changes from the previous quarter presented at a compound annual 
rate.  Annual data are presented both as index number series and percent 
changes from the previous year.  
	The index numbers and rates of change reported in the productivity 
and costs news release are rounded to one decimal place.  All percent 
changes in this release and on the BLS web site are calculated using index 
numbers to three decimal places.  These index numbers are available at the 
BLS web site, http://www.bls.gov/data/home.htm, or by contacting the BLS 
Division of Major Sector Productivity.  (Telephone 202-691-5606 or email 
DPRWEB@BLS.GOV)
      
      Information in this release will be made available to sensory-
impaired individuals upon request.  Voice phone: 202-691-5606; Federal 
Relay Service number: 1-800-877-8339.