While previewing this week’s deluge of key data out of the world’s largest economy, I exhorted readers not to ignore the update on productivity and unit labor costs.

Those figures aren’t the stuff headlines are made of, but they do matter for the macro, particularly in the current environment. Sure enough, they moved in the wrong direction during Q1.

Productivity dropped 2.7%, well worse than the 2% decline consensus expected, Thursday’s release showed. The range of estimates, from more than three-dozen economists, was -3.5% to 0.8%. Measured versus the same quarter of last year, productivity fell 0.9%. It was the fifth straight quarter during which productivity was lower on a YoY basis.

That’s never happened before in data going back 75 years. Productivity fell for four straight quarters in the 70s.

As a reminder, that’s just output per hour. If it’s lower than anticipated, unit labor costs will generally be higher. In Q1, ULC rose 6.3%, Thursday’s data showed, markedly higher versus the prior quarter and more than economists expected.

It’s the juxtaposition between falling productivity and surging wages that pushes unit labor costs higher. Hourly compensation rose 3.4% in Q1.

Although these figures, like last week’s hot ECI data, reflect last quarter’s trends, they aren’t a ringing endorsement of the notion that Jerome Powell is absolutely finished raising rates. Backward-looking though the numbers are, they could have “forward implications for wages,” as BMO’s Ian Lyngen put it.

Maybe ChatGPT can help with productivity.