Unit labor costs fell by 1.1 percent in the United States. In these comparisons, unit labor costs are measured on a U.S. dollar basis and are strongly affected by changes in exchange rates. The increase in unit labor costs in U.S. dollars in Japan, Korea and Taiwan occurred because the exchange rates of their currencies strengthened against the U.S. dollar during 1999. The exchange rates of all the other currencies weakened against the U.S. dollar. These data are a product of the BLS Foreign Labor Statistics program.
Data are preliminary and subject to revision.
Unit labor costs the cost of the labor input required to produce one unit of output are computed by dividing labor costs in nominal terms by real output.