{"id":441654,"date":"2026-11-05T21:40:15","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T14:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/us-q3-productivity-3-6-vs-2-8-expected-441654\/"},"modified":"2026-11-05T21:40:15","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T14:40:15","slug":"us-q3-productivity-3-6-vs-2-8-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/us-q3-productivity-3-6-vs-2-8-expected-441654\/","title":{"rendered":"US Q3 productivity +3.6% vs +2.8% expected"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<ul>\n<li>Prior was +1.4%<\/li>\n<li>Unit labor costs -0.7% vs +0.6% expected<\/li>\n<li>Prior unit labor costs +1.2%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>On the face of it, these look strong disinflationary but these numbers are largely ignored by policymakers because they&#8217;re notoriously volatile and hard to measure.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The US Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes its Productivity and Costs report quarterly. A preliminary estimate comes out roughly five weeks after the quarter ends, followed by a revised estimate about a month later that incorporates updated GDP and labor data.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The headline measure is labor productivity in the nonfarm business sector, defined as output per hour worked. It\u2019s reported as an annualized quarterly rate and as a year-over-year change. Output is derived from GDP, excluding government, households, nonprofits and farms, while hours come from the BLS employment surveys. Productivity growth is the main long-run driver of living standards, because it determines how fast incomes can rise without generating inflation.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Unit labor costs measure what businesses pay in compensation to produce one unit of output. They\u2019re calculated as hourly compensation divided by productivity. When wages rise faster than productivity, unit labor costs climb, which can squeeze profit margins or push companies to raise prices. That makes the measure a closely watched input in the inflation outlook and in the Federal Reserve\u2019s assessment of whether wage growth is consistent with its 2% target.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The report also includes figures for manufacturing and for nonfinancial corporations, along with hourly compensation and real hourly compensation.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The quarterly numbers are noisy and prone to large revisions, particularly as GDP and compensation data are updated. For that reason, economists tend to focus on multi-quarter and annual trends. The report rarely moves markets, but productivity has drawn renewed attention as investors and policymakers look for signs that artificial intelligence is lifting output per worker and allowing faster growth without added inflation.<\/p>\n<p>                            This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prior was +1.4% Unit labor costs -0.7% vs +0.6% expected Prior unit labor costs +1.2% On the face of it, these look strong disinflationary but these numbers are largely ignored by policymakers&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}