Labor productivity, or output per hour, is calculated by dividing an index of
real output by an index of hours worked of all persons, including employees,
proprietors, and unpaid family workers.

Labor Hours: Hours data for the labor productivity and cost measures
include hours for all persons working in the sector--wage and salary
workers, the self-employed and unpaid family workers. The primary source
of hours and employment data is the BLS Current Employment Statistics
(CES) program, which provides monthly survey data on the number of jobs
held by wage and salary workers in nonfarm establishments. The CES also
provides average weekly paid hours of production and nonsupervisory
workers in these establishments. Weekly paid hours are adjusted to hours
at work using data from the National Compensation Survey (NCS). The BLS
Hours at Work survey, conducted for this purpose, was used for earlier
years. The Office of Productivity and Technology estimates average weekly
hours at work for nonproduction and supervisory workers using information
from the Current Population Survey (CPS), the CES, and the NCS.

Data from the CPS are used for farm labor, nonfarm proprietors, and
nonfarm unpaid family workers. Estimates of labor input for government
enterprises are derived from the CPS, the CES, and the National Income and
Product Accounts (NIPA) prepared by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)
of the Department of Commerce.

The CES measures jobs, counting a person who is employed by two or
more establishments at each place of employment. In contrast, the CPS
features measures of employment that count each person only once and
classify each person according to his or her primary job; hours worked at
all jobs by that person accrue to his or her primary job. However, the CPS
also collects more detailed information on employment and hours worked at
primary jobs and all other jobs, separately. The BLS productivity measures
use the more detailed information on employment and hours to assign all
hours worked to the correct industrial sector and avoid duplicating hours
data from the CES.

Output: Business sector output is a chain-type, current-weighted index
constructed after excluding from gross domestic product (GDP) the
following outputs: general government, nonprofit institutions, and private
households (including owner-occupied housing). Corresponding exclusions
also are made in labor inputs. Business output accounted for about 75
percent of the value of GDP in 2011. Nonfarm business, which excludes
farming, accounted for about 74 percent of GDP in 2011.