Figure C. Cumulative productivity and median hourly compensation growth in the United States, 1979–2011. Productivity data are based on gross state product (output) data from Moody’s Analytics and an estimate of hours worked based on payroll employment and hours data. Specifically, productivity is calculated as output divided by the number of hours worked. There are no data on work hours available by state so the estimate is based on nonagricultural payroll employment, adjusted to reflect growth in hours per payroll employee. The adjustment is based on the relationship between the growth of total hours in the economy (unpublished data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics) and total nonagricultural payroll employment. This adjustment is applied to the state and national payroll data to obtain an hours trend. Median hourly compensation data are computed from Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group microdata used to obtain median hourly wages by state and an adjustment to convert to compensation. Median wages are converted to compensation by multiplying by a ratio of compensation to wages using Bureau of Economic Analysis NIPA data available for each state and the nation. Both series are presented as cumulative percent growth since 1979.