Third-Quarter Productivity Rises More Than Expected

.S. workers’ productivity rose at a 4.1% annual rate in the third quarter, the Labor Department said Thursday.

The rate was greater than a 2.1% gain in the second quarter. Labor costs fell at a 0.5% pace, the first such drop since the second quarter of 2004.

Economists had forecast productivity — a measure of how much an employee produces for every hour of work — to rise at a 2.6% rate, Bloomberg reported.

or non-financial corporations, productivity rose 6.3% in the second quarter, the latest period for which data was available.