US productivity rebounded sharply in the second quarter, posting its best showing in a year and easing doubts that the gains in worker efficiency of recent years were waning, the US government said today.
The US Labor Department's non-farm productivity report showed productivity - the amount of goods and services a worker can create per hour - rose at a larger-than-expected 2.5 per cent annual rate in the second quarter.
That was up substantially from a 0.1 per cent annual pace seen in the January-March quarter - itself an upward revision from an initially reported 1.2 per cent decline.
Unit labour costs, a closely-watched gauge of inflation pressures, moved lower in the quarter, rising at a 2.1 per cent annual rate from the first quarter's revised 5 per cent pace.
Although the second-quarter numbers were above the 1.6 per cent productivity gain seen in forecasts of analysts, downward revisions to previous years' data sounded a mildly cautionary note.
Revised to reflect updated output and employment information, the figures showed average annual productivity growth between 1996 and 2000 totalled 2.5 per cent, down slightly from the 2.8 per cent annual rate that had been previously reported.
Also, on a year-over-year basis, productivity in the second quarter was up at a 1.6 per cent annual rate, its slowest gain since the second quarter of 1997.