Word: nonfarm
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Despite the drop, the U.S. remains first in the international productivity league, but its lead is narrowing. Over the past ten years, nonfarm private productivity increased only 27%-the same as in Britain, but less than half as much as in France, West Germany and Italy and less than a quarter as much as in Japan. In 1950 it took seven Japanese or three German workers to match the industrial output of one American; today two Japanese and about 1.3 Germans do as well. Says Economist Arthur Laffer: "The U.S. is the fastest 'undeveloping' country in the world...
...A.A.M. wants crop prices raised to 90% of "parity," an antiquated concept founded on the argument that farm prices should have been rising as fast as nonfarm prices since World War I. Agriculture Department economists scoff at this demand; they say that 90% parity would drive retail food prices -the biggest single factor in the U.S.'s inflation problem -up by 16% this year, on top of the 10% increase...
...devote increasing attention to complying with health and safety rules, rather than buying productive machinery and figuring out more efficient operating methods. Though lives undoubtedly have been saved and the air and water cleansed, the price has been high. The CEA estimates that regulation may be cutting annual nonfarm productivity growth by four-tenths of a percentage point...
...Atlanta, however, housing is an exception. Overbuilding in recent years has held prices down. A three-bedroom house at $54,000 is still far beyond the reach of someone earning even twice as much as $6,191 a year, which is the federally set "poverty level" for a nonfarm family of four. But the average price of a house in Atlanta seems like a fire-sale bargain compared with the six-figure tags on similar homes in many parts of the North and West...
Corporate belt tightening, price increases and the continued buoyancy of the economy all helped to increase profits. Kemble Stokes, a Commerce Department senior economist, adds another, more intriguing reason. During the third quarter, the U.S. managed a jump in nonfarm productivity of 3.7% at an annual rate, compared with a first-quarter decline. The increase was startling because productivity has slipped badly in the U.S. since the mid-1960s, partly as a result of the flow of less skilled people into the labor force and the proliferation of costly government regulations. For the past five years America's rate...