Weird that a decline in productivity is interpreted this way. During the recession, productivity increased substantially. The general interpretation I heard for this fact was that businesses were forced to cut roles with marginal productivity because they didn't have a whole lot of excess money and confidence about revenue was low. I heard this from a variety of news sources and economists and never heard another explanation, so I think it is probably the generally accepted explanation.

I guess interpreting things pessimistically is good journalism, but if we're consistent I don't see why we would not apply the same rationale here. Businesses feel more confident about the future now, so they are resuming work that has lower marginal benefit, decreasing productivity relative to hourly wages.

It seems a bit inconsistent to interpret both positive and negative changes in productivity pessimistically. I would expect one to be interpreted positively and one negatively, unless we are currently at some optimum amount of productivity and a change in either direction is bad. I can't think of a mechanism by which this would be the case, so I'm inclined to write off this article.