But experts say the productivity drop wasn’t due to Americans taking more coffee breaks or phoning it in at work. The poor numbers were really a result of a
1.4% decline in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the first quarter.
“The key thing is productivity is actually measured by taking GDP and dividing it by hours worked. And GDP was freaking weird in the first quarter,” Heidi Shierholz, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, told
Fortune. “If you dig into the GDP numbers, you actually see healthy growth, but the top-line GDP numbers are negative because of a decline in inventories and an increase in imports, which has nothing to do with workers becoming less productive.”