London — Britain’s labour productivity fell for a second consecutive quarter, adding to the puzzle facing economists and leaving the UK trailing other advanced economies. Output per hour fell 0.1% in the three months through June after a 0.5% drop in the January to March period, the UK office for national statistics (ONS) said on Friday. From a year earlier, per hour work also fell, though output per worker rose slightly. This signals that employees are only producing more by working longer hours rather than improving their output. Over the long term, productivity has been lower on average than before the financial crisis, the ONS said. And on a per hour basis, the UK is more than 15% below the Group of Seven average. Samuel Tombs, an economist at Pantheon in London, said productivity has only grown 0.9% in the past decade, the worst performance in two centuries. The failure of productivity to recover to its pre-crisis trend has baffled economists for years. Possible explanations in...
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