Bad News for Jobseekers: Productivity Surges

[marmar]

via Dollars & Sense:



Bad News for Jobseekers: Productivity Surges
by Dollars and Sense


With its biggest quarterly gain in six years. But here's the dirty little secret: "According to the productivity report, hours worked plunged at a 7.6 percent rate in the second quarter, while output fell 1.7 percent." From Reuters:

U.S. productivity surges, inventories lean
Tue Aug 11, 2009 5:12pm EDT

By Lucia Mutikani


WASHINGTON (Reuters) U.S. output per worker rose at its fastest pace in six years during the second quarter as businesses wrung more productivity from fewer staff in a sign that a recovery from recession will be slow and unlikely to create a surge in hiring.

A Labor Department report on Tuesday showed non-farm productivity, a gauge of hourly output per worker, jumped at a 6.4 percent annual rate, the sharpest since the third quarter of 2003 after a 0.3 percent gain in the January-March quarter.

"The bounce in productivity is another indication that the nasty U.S. recession is drawing to a close. The bad news is, however, that firms are still reluctant to hire," said Harm Bandholz, an economist at UniCredit Markets and Investment Banking in New York.

A separate government report showed U.S. wholesalers cut their inventories of unsold goods for a 10th straight month in July as businesses continued running as lean as possible in the face of uncertainty about how durable a recovery will be. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dollarsandsense.org/blog/2009/08/bad-news-for-jobseekers-productivity.html