The Measurement and Analysis of Labor Productivity Changes in United States Fisheries

The prevailing belief seems to be that natural resources are scarce; that scarcity increases with time; and that this scarcity will ultimately lead to dwindling productivity of both manpower (labor) and equipment (capital) Based upon the data available, it is quite apparent that many sectors of the U.S. fishing industry have been faced with natural resource scarcity, but, for the period studied, have offset this negative factor by sociotechnical change. Over the 1950-66 period, the U.S. fishery sector as a whole experienced an annual growth in labor productivity of 3 percent. Although based upon a fixed resource, the U.S. fishing industry compared favorably in terms of productivity advances with the rest of the economy and foreign producers of fishery products. However, labor productivity advances in the fisheries (3 percent) fell significantly below those experienced in the poultry (10.2 percent) and meat (3.5 percent) sectors which are fish's chief competitors for the consumers' protein dollar. In addition, five major fishing sectors (lobsters, shrimp, dungeness crab, salmon and oysters) experienced an annual fall in labor productivity over the 1950-67 period. A detailed study of each fishery revealed that changes in labor productivity could be explained by increase pressure on the resource base and increases in effective fishing effort per worker. The study was able to identify the quantitative impact of each productivity factor in determining the time trend and oscillation of observed labor productivity in the fisheries. It was concluded that (1) many fisheries are able to compete with foreign increases in productivity; (2) the fishing industry's rate of productivity advance is respectable enough to say it does not contribute to inflationary pressure; (3) productivity gains in many fisheries are rapid enough to insure rising wages and profits; (4) the U.S. fishery sector has made a contribution, even though faced with a fixed natural resource, in delivering a relatively low cost protein product to the American consumer.