U.S. productivity, or output per worker hour, just registered another dismal performance. In the first quarter, it was up a bare 0.3 percent from a year earlier.
That has unfortunately become the norm. Productivity has risen just 0.6 percent on average over the past five years.
“This is the worst five-year run for productivity since the early 1980s, and the worst five-year performance on record outside of a recession,” J.P. Morgan economists observed in a client note.
Clearly, there is a problem. The trouble is determining what exactly it is””and what, if anything, to do about it.