Power-Labor Ratio

(in Russian, energovooruzhennost’ truda), an indicator characterizing the relation between expenditures of live labor and the productive consumption of mechanical and electric energy that replaces the application of man’s physical energy. Increasing the power-labor ratio is one of the fundamental conditions for scientific and technological progress in production and for the growth of labor productivity.

A distinction is made between the power available per worker (energovooruzhennost’ rabochikh) and the power-labor ratio. In the calculation of the power available per worker, the power capacity of an enterprise is compared with the number of workers using the power. The coefficient of the power available per worker (also called the coefficient of the potential power-labor ratio) derives from the ratio of the power capacity in kilowatts of an enterprise on a certain date to the number of workers in the largest shift. The coefficient of the power-labor ratio derives from the ratio of the quantity of energy in kilowatt-hours consumed in production to the number of man-hours worked; it indicates the quantity of energy required in a given period per man-hour worked (it is sometimes called the coefficient of the actual power-labor ratio).

In statistical publications, for example, in industry, the power-labor ratio is calculated as the ratio of the quantity of energy consumed in a year to the average number of workers employed during the same period. This indicator increased by a factor of 34 between 1913 and 1976. In agriculture the power-labor ratio is calculated as the ratio of the average annual capacity, in horsepower of all power plants to the average annual number of sovkhoz and kolkhoz workers engaged directly in production. This indicator was 0.5 on peasant holdings in Russia between 1913 and 1917 and 18.1 on kolkhozes, interkolkhoz agricultural enterprises, and sovkhozes in the USSR in 1976.