Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced labor productivity declined for the second straight quarter. It’s a worrisome figure for many reasons, the most important being that this is usually the signal of an upcoming recession. Headlines in the financial world were quick to fret that this is the first back-to-back decline since 2006, a strong signal in advance of the big recession in 2007.
Should we be worried? This is never a good sign, but the situation is very different. There are very good reasons why there is a decline in productivity and they all have the potential for signaling a recession ahead. But it also may be the last gasp of the bizarro economy where good news comes to us in the form of bad news, at least at first.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 