Neil Irwin on the Productivity Slowdown

In his Upshot piece discussing the May jobs report, Neil Irwin noted both the healthy job growth and the implication for productivity growth. I was troubled by the same issue when I wrote up the jobs report yesterday.

The point here is quite simple, we are seeing relatively rapid job growth, just under 2.0 percent over the last year, when the rate of economic growth is quite weak. The drop in first quarter GDP was clearly an anomaly. (One of the great pointless economic debates of all time is...