Technical notes

Technical Notes  

Goods producing sector 

This sector contains industries within agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting 
(NAICS 11), mining (NAICS 21), utilities (NAICS 22), construction (NAICS 23), and 
manufacturing (NAICS 31-33) except computer and electronic products (NAICS 334). 

Information and communications technology (ICT) sector 

Information and communication technology (ICT) contains the following industries: 
computer and electronic products (NAICS 334), broadcasting and telecommunications 
(NAICS 515,517), data processing, internet publishing, and other information services 
(NAICS 518,519) and computer systems design and related services (NAICS 5415). This 
definition is generally comparable to that used by the Organization for Economic 
Cooperation and Development (OECD), which defines the ICT sector using the 
International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) (OECD 2011). 

FIRE sector 

The finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sector contains industries within finance and 
insurance (NAICS 52) and real estate and rental and leasing (NAICS 53). 

Service providing sector 

This sector contains industries within trade (NAICS 42,44-45), transportation and 
warehousing (NAICS 48-49), publishing, except internet (includes software) (NAICS 511) 
and motion picture and sound recording (NAICS 512), and industries within services 
(NAICS 54-81) except computer systems design and related services (NAICS 5415). 

Capital input  

Data on investment for fixed assets are obtained from BEA. Data on inventories are 
estimated using data from BEA and additional information from IRS Corporation 
Income Returns. Data for land in the farm industry are obtained from USDA. Nonfarm 
industry detail for land is based on IRS book value data. Current-dollar value-added 
data, obtained from BEA, are used in estimating capital rental prices.  

Labor input  

Hours at work data reflect Productivity and Costs data as of the September 4, 2025 
“Productivity and Costs” news release (USDL-25-1343).

Labor input is obtained by chained superlative Tornqvist aggregation of the hours at 
work, classified by age, education, and sex with weights determined by each group’s 
share of total wages. The growth rate of labor composition is defined as the difference 
between the growth rate of weighted labor input and the growth rate of the hours. 

Energy, materials, and services 

Data on energy, materials, and services are obtained from BEA based on BEA annual 
input-output tables. Tornqvist indexes of each of these three input classes are derived at 
the NAICS industry level and then aggregated to the industries. Materials inputs are 
adjusted to exclude transactions between establishments within the same industry for 
goods producing industries. Services are adjusted to exclude transactions between 
establishments within the same industry for all non-goods producing industries. 

Sectoral output  

The output concept used to measure total factor productivity for industries is “sectoral 
output”. Sectoral output equals gross output (sales, receipts, and other operating 
income, plus commodity taxes plus changes in inventories), excluding transactions 
between establishments within the same industry.  

2024 manufacturing output measures are estimated based on historical relationships 
between BLS industrial output, BLS price indexes, and data on industrial production from 
the Federal Reserve Board. For select service providing industries, output measures are 
estimated using data from the Quarterly Services Survey from the Census Bureau. For all 
other nonmanufacturing industries, sectoral output is based on indexes of real quantity and 
cost measures from the BEA. Data sources by industry can be found at 
www.bls.gov/opub/hom/opt/data.htm. 

Other information  

Detailed information on methods used in this release can be found in the BLS 
Handbook of Methods Productivity and Technology section at 
www.bls.gov/opub/hom/opt/home.htm. 

Comprehensive tables containing more detailed data than that which is published in this 
news release are available upon request at 202-691-5606 or at 
www.bls.gov/productivity/tables. 
Industry specific contributions to output are available 
at www.bls.gov/productivity/highlights/contributions-of-total-factor-productivity-
major-industry-to-output.htm. 

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