For nonmanufacturing sectors, all employees are assumed to work the same hours as nonsupervisory employees. In manufacturing, average weekly hours for nonproduction workers are developed from BLS studies which provided data on the regularly scheduled workweek of white-collar employees. Government enterprise hours are developed from the National Income and Product Account estimates of employment combined with CPS data on average weekly hours. Thus, increases in productivity lower unit labor costs while increases in hourly compensation raise them. If both series move equally, unit labor costs will be unchanged.
Compensation is a measure of the cost to the employer of securing the services of labor.
The measures of compensation published alongside the productivity measures include an imputation of the earnings of the self-employed. This is because the output of proprietorships is included in our output measures. The percent change for the year should closely approximate the average of that year's four quarterly percent changes from the corresponding quarter of the preceding year . Because the percent change values presented in the official data are rounded to one decimal point, and because of minor variations in the year to year values used for seasonal adjustment of the quarterly data, results of a calculation based on press release data will reflect a small difference between the percent change for the year and the average of the quarterly percent changes from the preceding quarter a year ago. The percent change for the year is NOT equal to the average of that year's four quarterly percent changes from the previous quarter of the same year .