BIDEN ECONOMY: Manufacturing Data Shows Companies Are Paying Employees More to Produce Less

August 10, 2022 in News by RBN Staff

source:  gatewaypundit

By Joe Hoft
Published August 10, 2022 at 9:15am

On Monday while the world was watching the corrupt Deep State FBI’s machine gun-toting raid of President Trump’s home, there was more bad news for Biden’s economy.

Biden’s policies are crushing the US economy.

Conservative Treehouse noted that in the first quarter of this year US productivity dropped 7.4%  which was the largest quarterly drop in 74 years.  On Monday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported the second quarter productivity dropped another 4.6% [Data Here].

Nonfarm business sector labor productivity decreased 4.6 percent in the second quarter of 2022, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today, as output decreased 2.1 percent and hours worked increased 2.6 percent. (All quarterly percent changes in this release are seasonally adjusted annual rates.)  From the same quarter a year ago, nonfarm business sector labor productivity decreased 2.5 percent, reflecting a 1.5-percent increase in output and a 4.1-percent increase in hours worked. The 2.5-percent decline in labor productivity from the same quarter a year ago is the largest decline in this series, which begins in the first quarter of 1948. (See table A1.)

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Unit labor costs in the nonfarm business sector increased 10.8 percent in the second quarter of 2022, reflecting a 5.7-percent increase in hourly compensation and a 4.6-percent decrease in productivity. Unit labor costs increased 9.5 percent over the last four quarters. (See tables A1 and 2.) This is the largest four-quarter increase in this measure since a 10.6-percent increase in the first quarter of 1982. BLS calculates unit labor costs as the ratio of hourly compensation to labor productivity. Increases in hourly compensation tend to increase unit labor costs and increases in productivity tend to reduce them.

Labor productivity, or output per hour, is calculated by dividing an index of real output by an index of hours worked by all persons, including employees, proprietors, and unpaid family workers. The second quarter of 2022 is the second consecutive quarter in which output decreased while hours increased. The resulting productivity declines over these two quarters reduced the average annual productivity growth rate since the fourth quarter of 2019–the last quarter not affected by the COVID-19 pandemic–to 0.6 percent in the nonfarm business sector. Output and hours worked in the nonfarm business sector are now 2.9 percent and 1.5 percent above their fourth-quarter 2019 levels, respectively.

The result of these numbers is that final output costs will either result in higher prices or lower profits.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

– […] Rising productivity is the key to improving living standards; it allows companies to raise wages without raising prices and fueling inflation. Instead, businesses appear to be paying workers more to produce less. The higher unit labor costs suggest companies will either endure lower profits or pass on higher costs to consumers.

“The trend in productivity growth has worsened compared to prior to the pandemic, and the surge in unit labor costs makes the Fed’s challenge of getting inflation back down to its 2% target all the more challenging,” Wells Fargo economist Sarah House said in a research note.

With increasing inflation and fuel costs, Biden’s actions have destroyed the economy.  We are seeing it in every measurement possible.