May 20, 2022
In the first quarter, worker productivity fell 7.5 percent, the fastest drop since 1947.
At the same time, labor costs as a percentage of productivity increased 11.6 percent, bringing the four-quarter increase to 7.2 percent, the fastest in about 40 years.
Weekly jobless claims rose to 200,000, far exceeding Wall Street’s forecast.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, worker productivity fell at the fastest rate in nearly 75 years to begin 2022, while labor costs soared as the United States struggled with rising Covid cases.
Nonfarm productivity, which measures output in relation to hours worked, fell 7.5 percent from January to March, the most since the third quarter of 1947.
At the same time, unit labor costs rose 11.6 percent, bringing the four-quarter increase to 7.2 percent, the highest since the third quarter of 1982. The metric computes how much employers pay employees in terms of salary and benefits per unit of output.
Source: CNBC
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