Productivity trends in kitchen cabinet manufacturing

Output per employee hour in the manufacture of wood kitchen cabinets rose at an average annual rate of 2.1 percent between 1972 and 1982,1 or at virtually the same pace as for all manufacturing (2.0 percent) . However, annualized increases in both output and employee hours were greater for the industry (4.7 percent and 2.5 percent) than for total manufacturing (1 .4 percent and 0.5 percent) . Factors underlying the 10-year productivity advance in the making of kitchen cabinets include improvements in woodworking machinery and particleboard processing equipment; faster drying glues and coating materials; and more mechanized transfer apparatus. Capital expenditures increased strongly during the latter half of the seventies, although they subsequently tapered through the early eighties. The productivity trend in the industry was marked by two distinct phases, which paralleled developments in all manufacturing . Between 1972 and 1979 (the industry's output peak for the period examined here), productivity rose strongly, reflecting fast-paced output gains. But over the 1979-82 period, which was marked by recession and a deep slump in residential construction, the trend reversed direction, with output declining at an even faster rate than employee hours: