Published quarterly by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor productivity index tracks the average output per hour of human labor. Data is adjusted for both seasonality and inflation.
If AI raises how much workers produce per hour, the effect should eventually show up in economy-wide labor productivity data.
The nonfarm business sector is often used as the headline measure of labor productivity for the US business sector; farm productivity depends heavily on weather and is highly volatile, so excluding it reduces noise in the data. The business sector excludes workers employed by governments, households (e.g., nannies), and non-profits (including most universities).
We obtain data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Productivity and Costs series PRS85006093, labor productivity (output per hour) for all workers in the nonfarm business sector, seasonally adjusted. Dates are the first day of each quarter. We apply no further processing.
New data is typically released about five weeks after each quarter ends. Note that data is frequently substantially adjusted after the initial release, meaning recent values are noisier than older ones.
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Productivity and Costs.
Our charts, text and processing are available under the Creative Commons Attribution license. The underlying data comes from US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Productivity and Costs (https://www.bls.gov/productivity/) and is subject to its own licence or terms.
Published quarterly by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor productivity index tracks the average output per hour of human labor. Data is adjusted for both seasonality and inflation.