Expert: Sherry Wallin - 1/30/2009

Question
hi

can u please help solve this problem showing in detail the calculation

Kleen Karpet cleaned 65 rugs in October, consuming the following resources:
Labor:       520 hours at $13 per hour
Solvent:    100 gallons at $5 per gallon
Machine rental:    20 days at $50 per day
a)   What is the labor productivity?
b)   What is the multifactor productivity?


thank you for your help

waiting for your reply asap

take care

regards

Answer
Hi Essa~
    This sounds like an economic question with some math involved. I googled what the definition of labor productivity and based on the difinition I found: rate of output per worker (or group of workers per unit time

You have 520 labor hours and 65 jobs so the rate is 65 jobs per 520 hours or 65/520 which is 1 job every 8 hours or 1/8 per hour. Again I caution you this is just based on a definition found on the internet. If you are suppose to use some other definition this may not be answering your question.

Additionally, I have as a definition of multifactor: measure of output per unit of combined inputs such as labor, capital, costs. My interpretation of this it whatever has to be spent to get a job done. Now we can respond to this in terms of per job or per month or even per person or per hour. I have chosen to use for inputs all the costs involved:

Labor: 520 hours at $13 per hour  = $6760
Solvent: 100 gallons at $5 per gallon  = $500
Machine rental: 20 days at $50 per day  = $1000
Total costs: $8260

so output per combined inputs is 65jobs/$8260 = .007869249 or about .79%

Math Prof

This might be better answered by an expert in econ...