First quarter 2019 productivity

  • Prior reading was +1.9% (revised to +1.3%)
  • Unit labor costs -0.9% vs +1.5% exp
  • Prior unit labor costs +2.0% (revised to +2.5%)

That's a super strong number. Productivity is a weird one for the FX market. Naturally it's good for an economy but, as you can see, it makes workers cheaper and that's actually deflationary so it means you can keep interest rates lower.

That said, measuring productivity is a mess.