Gross domestic product, which measures total goods and service output within U.S. borders, was slightly weaker than the 0.7% Wall Street had expected.
For some, that is another reason to take this first estimate with an extra dose of salt: service sector output is especially hard to measure accurately, even without all these special factors being thrown into the mix.
In 1960-94, service-sector output and manufacturing output grew at roughly the same pace in rich economies.
Of course, you can always use a streaming music service on a computer and output the digital signal from there without any special equipment.
This naturally shifted employment from the more productive manufacturing sector, where fewer workers are needed to produce a given increase in output, to service industries where more workers are needed.
The economist saw manufacturing output growth outpace service sector growth for the second quarter in a row, with a strong performance by factories in Eastern European nations like the Czech Republic, Turkey, and Russia.
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If a carmaker stops employing its own office cleaners and instead buys cleaning services from a specialist company, then output and employment in the service sector appear to grow overnight, and those in manufacturing to shrink, even though nothing has changed.
The ONS said upward revisions to production output were offset by downward revisions to service industries.
This is one of the reasons why U.S. service industries only export about three percent of their gross output.
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The first looks at output (number of widgets, billable hours, service calls, whatever) per dollar spent to generate it.
But: If yours is a "personal service corporation"--meaning the corporation's main output is your own work effort, for instance as consultant or pet groomer--then all your profits are taxed at a flat 35% corporate rate and you'll usually do better with a passthrough.
While piracy is a service problem, the REAL problem Hollywood suffers is that most of its output is junk.
Under the PPP route the specification is "output" based - the authority will specify the level of service it wants delivered and leave the private sector to decide on the best way to deliver that particular service.
"We do not see how the BBC World Service can plan properly how to reflect its new priorities, pursue its new objectives or shape its output... given the short lead-in time, " the report said.
More importantly, although the service's budget rose in real terms by over 7% a year from 1998 to 2003, its real output rose by only 3.7% a year.
For example, the news that Britain's manufacturing output fell in the fourth quarter of last year prompted some talk of recession, yet the much larger service sector, insulated from global competition, continued to expand at an annual rate of more than 4%.
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