The very important context is that productivity sharply rose in 2020, in the middle of the Covid recession. The recent drop in productivity is mostly just a return to pre-pandemic baseline.
The simplest explanation is probably just that the workers who were laid off during Covid were the least productive, and so average worker output went up, then fell as they re-entered the labor force. Or maybe even just there was some sort of abberation with how the complex statistic or productivity was calculated (e.g. inflation was actually here earlier than measured by CPI, and output was deflated incorrectly).
Either way, this is much more likely a pandemic related disruption and return to normalcy, rather than an indication that anything fundamental is "broken"
The simplest explanation is probably just that the workers who were laid off during Covid were the least productive, and so average worker output went up, then fell as they re-entered the labor force. Or maybe even just there was some sort of abberation with how the complex statistic or productivity was calculated (e.g. inflation was actually here earlier than measured by CPI, and output was deflated incorrectly).
Either way, this is much more likely a pandemic related disruption and return to normalcy, rather than an indication that anything fundamental is "broken"