Correct hyphenation for conjunction of hyphenated compound adjectives

Consider the following sentence:

The labour-intensive and time-intensive part starts tomorrow.

I want to write this without rewriting the word "intensive."

Is this the correct way to do it?

The labour- and time-intensive part starts tomorrow.

Note the hyphen hanging after the word labour. Or should there be no hyphen after labour? Can anyone point me to a reference that talks about this?


Fowler recommends that you leave out the hyphen after labour there, because it is not strictly needed for comprehension. I don't have a reference on hand, but it is no doubt in his Dictionary of Modern English Usage, a highly respected style book.