Productivity Drops, Jobless Claims Remain Elevated

from Wall St Journal:
Stock futures are rallying for some strange reason, though the morning’s plate of economic data was sort of ugly.
Jobless claims came in at 409,000, just a little higher than the 407,000 economists expected. The prior week’s claims were revised up, as they always are, to 421,000 from 417,000. This level of claims is really too high.
Second quarter productivity was revised down to a decline of 0.7%, the biggest drop since the fourth quarter of 2008, from a first reading of -0.3%. It has fallen for three quarters in a row, for the first time since 1979.

from Yahoo Finance:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Worker productivity in the United States fell this spring more quickly than previously estimated while labor costs were rising at a faster clip. Both developments could pose threats to a fragile economic recovery.
The U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday that productivity declined at an annual rate of 0.7 percent in the April-June period, a bigger drop than the 0.3 percent decline reported a month ago. Labor costs rose at an annual rate of 3.3 percent, faster than the 2.4 percent increase originally reported.
The changes reflected downward revisions made last week to overall economic growth which showed the economy's output barely growing in the spring. Declining productivity, if it persists for a prolonged period, would represent a serious economic threat while rising labor costs would cut into corporate profits.