Productivity gains lukewarm for makers of nonelectric heating equipment,(EXCERPT), Monthly Labor Online, Mar. 1988

Productivity gains lukewarm for makers of nonelectric heating equipment

John W. Ferris and Virginia L. Klarquist

Productivity, or output per employee hour, in the nonelectric heating equipment industry rose at an average annual rate of 1.6 percent from 1972 to 1985.¹ For all manufacturing, the rate of increase was 2.2 percent. The growth in productivity reflected a negligible decline in output of 0.1 percent per year and a decline in employee hours of 1.7 percent. (See table 1.) Contributing to the rise in productivity for the industry were advances in metalworking, improved plant layout, and increases in capital expenditures per employee.

The productivity trend for the 13-year period examined here was marked by much volatility, rising in 7 years and falling in 6. In general, productivity movements have been influenced by changes in output. For the 1972-76 period, productivity declined at a rate of 0.8 percent, as output dropped 7.2 percent annually. During the 1976-80 period, productivity increased dramatically, rising 2.9 percent a year, as output rebounded to a 10.8-percent annual rate of growth. Since 1980, productivity has varied with underlying movements in output while registering a slight increase of 0.1 percent per year. The following tabulation shows average annual rates, in percent, for periods between 1972 and 1985.

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Footnotes

1 The nonelectric heating equipment industry is designated by the Office of Management and Budget as SIC 3433 in the Standard Industrial Classification Manual, 1972. This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in the manufacturing of heating equipment including gas, oil, and stoker coal fired equipment for the automatic utilization of gaseous, liquid, and solid fuels. Products include cast iron heating boilers, cast iron radiators, cast iron convectors, domestic heating stoves, steel heating boilers, floor furnaces, wall furnaces, and solar energy collectors. Also found among the primary products of the industry are duct furnaces, unit heaters, infrared heaters, mechanical stokers, oil burners, gas burners, heat transfer coils, range boilers, expansion tanks, hot water storage tanks supplied by separate heaters, unit ventilators, and nonelectric prefabricated metal fireplaces. Excluded from this industry are establishments primarily engaged in the manufacturing of electric heating equipment, warm air furnaces, cooking stoves, industrial process furnaces, industrial process ovens, industrial, power and marine boilers.
Average annual rates shown in the text and tables are based on the linear least squares trend of the logarithms of the index numbers. The indexes for productivity and related variables are updated annually, and published in Productivity Measures for Selected Industries and Government Services, Bulletin 2296 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, November 1987).

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