Fourth-Quarter Productivity Rises 3%

Click here to write a Letter to the Editor.
U.S. productivity rose 3% in the fourth quarter, following a 0.1% decline in the third quarter, the Labor Department said Wednesday.The gain was higher than economists’ forecasts of a 2% increase, Bloomberg reported.Productivity is a measure of how much an employee produces for every hour of work. The third-quarter rate was originally reported as a 0.2% increase. Among manufacturers, productivity rose at a 2.2% rate, following a 6.3% surge in the third quarter.