Off the wire
• Gold futures see sharp fall as demand down  • Roundup: Turkey welcomes Astana "de-escalation zones" consensus  • Greek former minister released from jail after 5 years due to poor health  • Exhibition of Chinese creation myth comics in Brussels  • 2nd LD Writethru: U.S. House passes bill to repeal Obamacare  • Mozambique's main opposition party announces indefinite truce with gov't  • U.S. Senate approves spending bill to fund government  • Greek court rules against new extradition request for last Turkish soldiers  • Zuma calls for more attention on youth at WEF  • African foreign ministers to meet in Kigali for AU reforms  
You are here: 　 Home

U.S. productivity falls in Q1

Xinhua, May 4, 2017 Adjust font size:

Productivity of U.S. workers decreased in the first quarter of this year, indicating a weak economy at the beginning of the year, showed data released on Thursday.

The nonfarm business sector labor productivity decreased at an annual rate of 0.6 percent in the first quarter, the Labor Department said.

The decrease of labor productivity reflected an increase of 1 percent in output and an increase of 1.6 percent in hours worked.

The declining productivity indicates weak economic performance at the beginning of this year.

According to the advance estimate released by the Commerce Department, the U.S. economy grew only 0.7 percent in the first quarter of this year, sharply lower than the 2.1 percent growth in the previous quarter. The growth was the weakest quarterly performance since the first quarter of 2014.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen have said at many occasions that the outlook for productivity growth was a key uncertainty for the U.S. economy and a key determinant of improvements in living standards. Endit