1. Record the values of the unit labor costindexfor the most recent 12 quarters (3 years). Use Business Output, which you will find in Table 1 (page 7). Make sure to go to the Indices (plural of index) section at the bottom of the page. The Unit Labor Cost should be the third from the right.
2. How did productivity and the cost of labor affect the unit labor cost for this time period? You will need to read the release, and you can look at your unit labor cost index to follow what the Release says.
3. What impact does increased productivity have on prices? How about decreased productivity? Do you think that more productive labor makes higher wages/salaries than less productive? Why or why not? (We're not talking about one worker vs another in the same organization - too many individual situations there. This is overall, from one economy or country to another.)
4. What do you think causes productivity of labor in the US to be fairly high?How do you think US labor productivity compares to that of other countries such as Bangladesh, or even China?