Growth of South Korea's manufacturing productivity snapped back in the first quarter from three months earlier due mainly to decreased labor input, a report showed Wednesday.

   The manufacturing sector's labor productivity grew a solid 9.7 percent on-year to 122.7 in the January-March period after growth started to lose steam from the second quarter of 2010, according to the report by the Korea Productivity Center (KPC) on Wednesday.

   In the January-March period of last year, manufacturing productivity shot up 20.7 percent to 111.8, but the growth rate dropped to 4.9 percent in the fourth quarter.

   Labor productivity is measured by dividing industrial output by labor input during a given period of time. The KPC uses 2008 as the base year.

   "A decline in labor input contributed largely to the first quarter rebound," said the center under the Ministry of Knowledge Economy.

   Companies hired more people, but overall employment did not reach the levels tallied from the year before when the economy started to recover from the 2008 global financial crisis, it said.
In 2010, South Korea's gross domestic product expanded 6.2 percent on-year, compared with a 0.2 percent gain in 2009.

The report also showed service sector productivity growth losing ground for the second straight quarter. Service productivity grew 1.3 percent to 107.4, compared with a 6.8 percent gain in the third quarter of last year and a 1.7 percent increase in the fourth quarter.

Source: Yonhap News (July 27, 2011)