US Productivity Suffers First Two-Quarter Annual Decline Since 1993

US Productivity rose a disappointing 3.1% in Q3 (missing expectations of a 3.3% rise). However, on a year-over-year basis, Q3 saw a second consecutive decline – the first two-quarter decline in US productivity since 1993. Unit labor cost growth slowed in Q3 to 3.00% (with QoQ growth tumbling from 6.2% in Q2 to just 0.7% in Q3).
Actually if one looks at the official table US productivity has notr risen YoY since Q4 2015 – (Q1 0.0%, Q2 -0.3%, Q3 -0.05%)
But, as Fed-induced investment in buybacks crowds out capex, real-worker productivity is collapsing (but buy back productivity is soaring!!).
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How can this be?? The mainstream media ‘economists’ are stunned. As we explained previously, there are a few reasons… Even Alan Greenspan has warned that America is “in trouble basically because productivity is dead in the water…” There are numerous reasons for this plunge in worker-productivity, from perverted inventives not to work to unintended consequences of monetary policy enabling zombies, but perhaps the most critical driver is exposed in the following dismal chart…

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 6, 2016.

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