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Focus: Productivity in UK Manufacturing Industry
Author(s) -
DICKS GEOFFREY
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
economic outlook
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1468-0319
pISSN - 0140-489X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0319.1983.tb00735.x
Subject(s) - productivity , falling (accident) , recession , economics , earnings , unit (ring theory) , labour economics , manufacturing , agricultural economics , demographic economics , business , economic growth , macroeconomics , finance , medicine , mathematics education , mathematics , environmental health , marketing
Manufacturing industry has been the major casualty of the recession, recording a total fall in output of about 20 per cent. It is unusual for productivity to rise when output is falling, yet in the last two years output per person employed in manufacturing has risen by 15 per cent. As a result, and in spite of earnings growth of over 25 per cent between 1980 and 1982, the increase in unit labour costs was held to under 15 per cent in the same two‐year period. In this Focus we examine how and why these developments have taken place. Our general conclusion is that, with a recovery now under way, normal pro‐cyclical productivity gains are reinforcing the abnormal achievements of the last two years and that, in consequence, industrial costs and profits are improving sharply.