It's res per second. For example, the villager in your example gathered 1.08 wood every second on average.
so to reach the 10 wood needed for dropoff (unupgraded) the villager would take about 9.24 seconds.
With the upgrade, gather capacity is increased too to make villagers more efficient. Hypothetically, if the capacity was 10 and gather rate increased to 1.19, the villager would take only 8.4 seconds to gather 10 wood.
being under 1 doesn't make a difference.
Herd rate = 0.73
10/0.73 = 13.67 seconds to gather 10 food.
Sometimes you need to scare the lambs,
tell tales of evil bad wolves.
Because if there is nothing to fear,
they might think for themselves.
[This message has been edited by Sam_Ham (edited 03-02-2006 @ 05:02 PM).]