It’s been a rough three years. The globe effectively shut down as a once-per-century pandemic claimed millions of lives, while on the business front, the U.S. saw a layoff wave incomparable in modern history. Working our way back to a relative baseline has come with hiccups, like a huge shift to remote work, and then a semi-return to normal. As a mark of what a long journey it’s been, the World Health Organization just today declared COVID is no longer an emergency, after more than three years. But for a while there, amid the panic and tragedy, workers were somehow more productive than ever. Not anymore.
The U.S. has now had five consecutive quarters of year-over-year declines in productivity, according to research from EY-Parthenon, using data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That has never happened before, in data going back to 1948.
