Dive Brief:

• Maybe it's spring fever or an early summer slump, but U.S. workers' productivity slipped in the April-June quarter, fueling a 12-month decline in how much employees are producing for every hour worked, according to the New York Times.
• The Times reports that U.S. productivity fell at an annual rate of 0.5% in the second quarter after a 0.6% drop during the first three months of 2016, according to the Labor Dept. Over the past 12 months, productivity has dropped 0.4%.
• Based on Labor Dept. data, productivity has been slipping for the last five years — a problem mainly because "productivity growth is the key factor supporting rising living standards and higher incomes," the Times said. An ironic aspect of the productivity issue is its decline has happened while hiring has been relatively strong.

Dive Insight:

Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at the forecasting firm MFR, told the Times that the underlying trend of productivity "is likely to remain in a soft trend in coming months as output rises at a modest pace and hours worked continue to move ahead."

As many economists have pointed out, the economy has been experiencing a relatively weak expansion — the 1% growth rate during the first six months of 2016 is only half the already poor average of the seven-year recovery from the 2008 recession, the Times reports.