More Economic News
As a follow-up on last week’s Agurban on manufacturing in America, a new report just released states, “Productivity at 6-year high, jobless claims fall”. This is good news!
Following is the report, in part:
U.S. business productivity in the third quarter grew at the fastest pace in six years and new claims for jobless aid fell to a 10-month low last week, indicating labor market may be hitting bottom.
The Labor Department said on Thursday productivity surged at a 9.5 percent annual rate, the quickest pace since the third quarter of 2003, as companies squeezed more output from a smaller pool of labor to cut costs.
Productivity grew at a 6.9 percent pace in the April-June period.
In another report, the department said initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 20,000 to 512,000 last week, the lowest since early January.
Productivity in manufacturing rose at a record 13.6 percent rate in the third quarter. Total non-farm output rebounded, growing at a 4 percent rate in the July-September quarter after dropping 1.1 percent in the previous period.
Productivity has increased sharply over the past two quarters, largely driven by aggressive cost cutting by businesses.
As the U.S. economy continues to improve, we are hopeful that manufacturers will begin bringing back more workers, and further increase production. While 2010 still looks to be a turning point for manufacturing, we look forward to more prosperous times ahead.
