First-Quarter Productivity Drops: Non-farm productivity fell a...

First-Quarter Productivity Drops: Non-farm productivity fell a revised 2.7% in the first quarter, the largest drop in more than eight years in the official score card of how efficiently American businesses are operating, the Labor Department said. The downward revision of the index reflects poorly on the United States’s ability to compete against its trading partners, economists say. The government had previously estimated that productivity fell only 1%. However, the news was better in manufacturing. The department revised the manufacturing productivity figure upward--to 4.9% from 4.1%.