03/29/2024

U.S. Worker Productivity Slipped in Final Months of 2017

U.S. worker productivity grew below its long-run average for the seventh straight year in 2017.

Nonfarm business-sector productivity, measured as the goods and services produced per hour worked, advanced 1.2% last year from 2016, the Labor Department said Thursday. That matched the average rate recorded from 2007 through 2017, and is well below the 2.1% annual rate averaged since 1947.

Productivity hasn’t topped its long-run average since 2010, when the economy was first emerging from a deep recession.

In the fourth quarter, productivity decreased at a 0.1% seasonally adjusted annual rate. The first quarterly decline since early 2016 offset what had been solid gains in the middle of the year. Americans worked more hours in the final three months of 2017, while the pace of output gains cooled. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected a 0.6% growth rate for the latest quarter.

Soft productivity gains is an impediment to stronger wage gains, and ultimately better economic growth.

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