When Productivity Isn’t Efficiency
This chart compares cumulative labor-productivity growth with integrated total-factor-productivity growth across 63 U.S. industries from 2019 to 2024. The gap is an accounting residual associated with capital deepening and labor composition, not a causal estimate of automation or management quality.
What does it show?
Labor productivity and integrated TFP moved together, but the relationship was far from one-for-one. In several industries, capital deepening and changes in labor composition appear to have done much of the work.
Methodology
For each detailed industry, compute 100 × ln(index in end year / index in start year) for BEA–BLS integrated labor productivity and integrated TFP. The gap is an accounting residual associated with capital deepening and labor composition in the integrated production-account framework. The comparison is descriptive and does not identify causal effects. Integrated TFP is distinct from the official BLS multifactor-productivity series.