On the heels of a report Wednesday that said private companies had slashed nearly 700,000 jobs in February, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said today that the productivity of American companies declined by 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter.
The department measures productivity in output per hour of all persons.
Earlier department estimates for productivity were revised down by almost 4 percent as the fourth quarter numbers were calculated.
The productivity of the manufacturing sector dropped by 4 percent. Productivity among durable goods manufacturers declined by 14.8 percent during the quarter.
