Labor productivity in elementary and secondary schools down slightly from 1989 to 2012

BLS has developed new measures of labor productivity in elementary and secondary schools (kindergarten through grade 12). Productivity, expressed as output per hour, relates an industry’s output of goods or services to the amount of labor input required to produce that output. In elementary and secondary schools, output is basically the number of students enrolled with adjustments for quality change made using students’ scores on standardized tests. Over the period from 1989 to 2012, labor productivity in elementary and secondary schools declined, on average, about 0.2 percent per year.

Output in elementary and secondary schools increased at an average annual rate of 1.2 percent from 1989 to 2012, with the highest growth rate occurring in the 1990s. Output grew 1.8 percent per year from 1990 to 2000, slowed to 0.5 percent per year between 2000 and 2007, and then slowed even further to a 0.1-percent average annual rate from 2007 to 2012.

Over the 1989–2012 period, productivity in elementary and secondary schools increased in the early years (1990–95), declined from 1996 to 2009, and increased slightly from 2010 to 2012. Despite the recent increases, productivity in this industry has not returned to its 1989 level.

These data are from the Labor Productivity and Costs program. To learn more, see “Labor productivity growth in elementary and secondary school services: 1989–2012,” by Susan G. Powers and Steven Flint, Monthly Labor Review, June 2016.