BELL and KINOSHITA: GAINS IN U.S. FISHERIES 



eries is important, we do want some summary 

 measure to tell us how the entire fishery sector 

 is doing with respect to the rate of growth in 

 labor productivity. If so, we can compare this 

 summary measure with other important sectors 

 in the U.S. economy. Fortunately, we can con- 

 struct an aggregate index of labor productivity. 

 The construction of this index is rather tech- 

 nical in nature and will not be discussed in 

 detail here.** Suffice it to say we cannot add the 

 total pounds of fish landed in the United States 

 and divide by the number of fishermen employed 

 when constructing an aggregate index over a 

 period of time. This is true since there may be 

 appreciable shifts in the production of various 

 species with differing absolute productivity, 

 thereby biasing the index. (Therefore, the con- 

 structed index controls product mix.) 



Constructing an index based on the 17 fish- 

 eries shown in Table 1, we find that aggregate 

 productivity grew at an annual rate of 0.7% . To 

 obtain a more representative figure for all fish- 

 eries, we added an 18th fishery, which repre- 

 sents the group of remaining U.S. fisheries not 

 included in the original 17. The aggregate index 

 showed productivity growth at an annual rate 

 of 2.5% over the 1950-69 period.-' However, there 

 seems to be a noticeable tendency for the growth 

 rate of fishermen's productivity to decline over 

 the observed period; i.e., the annual growth 

 rate over 1950-59 was 4.7% , but it slackened to 

 0.5% in the last 10 yr. This was probably a re- 



Table 2. — Ranking of fisheries by the cyclical variation 

 in output per fisherman. 1950-69. 



•* See "Output per man-hour measures: industries." 

 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1966). Because of the prob- 

 lems with our data, it should be said that it was implicit- 

 ly assumed that the work year is approximately the same 

 for each fishery; a biasing factor may be introduced in 

 the index to account for errors as a result of this assump- 

 tion. However, as long as the difference in work years 

 remains constant from fishery to fishery, this factor 

 should not appreciably influence the time trend in the 

 productivity index. 



^ The 18th fishery contained all residual fisheries or 

 mostly minor fisheries that were too numerous to analyze 

 separately. However, the rate of growth of labor productiv- 

 ity of the residual was fairly high. The reasons behind 

 this finding are numerous. First, some of the residual fish- 

 eries are latent or newly developing, resulting in high 

 productivity. Second, some duplication of fishermen 

 operating in a number of fisheries is implicit in some of 

 the data. That is, fishermen included in the 17 individual 

 fisheries should also be counted in the residual. However, 

 they were not since we merely subtracted the total number 

 of fishermen in the 17 fisheries from aggregate employ- 

 ment (i.e., with no duplication). This would bias labor 

 productivity in the 18th fishery upward. The reader should 

 be aware of this technical problem that could not be solved 

 with existing information. 



suit of increasing fishing pressure in established 

 fisheries (see section below on factors behind 

 productivity advances). This index is plotted 

 in Figure 1. On the average, the American fish- 

 erman has been able to raise his productivity 

 significantly over the last 19 yr. This is especial- 

 ly encouraging when we realize that the fisher- 

 men, as opposed to their counterparts in manu- 



INDEX 

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nor 



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I9S0 1955 I9«0 19*5 !»*» 



TEAKS 



Figure 1. — Index of labor productivity for the fishing 

 sector. 1950-69. (Productivity index is based on 17 individ- 

 ual fisheries and 18th residual category.) 



913 



