Technical notes

Technical Notes 

Goods producing sector

This sector contains industries within agriculture, forestry, fishery, 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 
November 3, 2022 “Productivity and Costs” news release (USDL- 22-2096) and 
reflects a new methodology for estimating hours worked. More information on 
the methodology change can be found at 
www.bls.gov/productivity/technical-notes/labor-productivity-hours-worked
-method-using-ces-all-employee-hours-nov-2022.htm.
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. 

2021 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 for can 
be found at www.bls.gov/opub/hom/msp/data.htm. 

Other information 

Detailed information on methods used in this release can be found in 
the BLS Handbook of Methods Productivity Measures: Business Sector and
Major Sector section at www.bls.gov/opub/hom/msp/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/mfp/mprdload.htm. Industry specific contributions to 
output are available at www.bls.gov/mfp/contributions-to-output.htm.

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