Productivity Growth Slows in The Second Quarter And Labor Costs Fall in The First Quarter

The US Labor Department said on Tuesday that labor productivity growth in the United States slowed in the second quarter, while labor costs were much weaker than expected in the first quarter.

Non-farm productivity, which measures hourly output per worker, rose 2.3% on-year in the past quarter. The data for the first quarter was revised downward to show that productivity rose by 4.3% instead of 5.4% in the previous reading.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected productivity to rise 3.5%.

Productivity jumped in the early stages of the coronavirus epidemic, before declining in the last three months of 2020, and has since recovered.