unit cost
2
3.3
- noun
- Specialized
:
costo unitario
- The profit is price minus unit cost times demand.
- low unit cost
- reduce the unit cost
- average unit cost
And see, when you have negative productivity plus high labor costs, you equal really high unit costs for labor.
- And see, when you have negative productivity plus high labor costs, you equal really high unit costs for labor.
- So each grommet of any case, not just our, you know, special grommets are several dollars of unit cost.
Examples
-
In times of low demand, this has the effect of putting up unit costs.
Academic text (1991) -
Second, double-digit inflation in the late 1970s and early 1980s caused unit costs of shrimping to increase.
Academic text (1992) -
Environmental conditions, unit price received, and unit costs of fishing also were held constant.
Academic text (1992) -
Higher sales volumes also mean higher production levels, which will bring unit costs down.
Academic text (2016) -
Then, for each item, they added labor and expenses to the unit cost.
Academic text (1998) -
Contracts were awarded in October 2004 based on the lowest unit cost, including transmission.
Blog text (5) -
Suppose that technological progress reduces the unit cost of extraction for all deposits.
Academic text (2016) -
The costs of the program were calculated assuming a unit cost of $15 per installed retrofit kit.
Academic text (1992) -
Agricultural productivity there remains low, which implies both high unit costs of producing food and low farm incomes.
Academic text (2003) -
The company managed to lower its unit cost by streamlining its production process.
Synonyms
11
2.7
Total money spent on all units divided by the number of units
How Expensive
- Specialized
2
3.3
- Specialized
11
2.7
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'the cost to produce, store, and sell one unit' is directly compositional from 'unit' (one item) + 'cost' (monetary amount), so the overall sense is simply the cost associated with a single item. This noun–noun construction (equivalent to 'cost per unit') is a common, cross-linguistic pattern and will be understandable to a B1 learner who knows both constituents.
Etymology
The term unit cost comes from a simple image: imagine making one product and adding up all the money for materials, work, packaging, and selling that single item. The word unit means 'one item' and cost is the money to make or sell it, so the phrase refers to the 'cost per item' a company has to pay.