Barkin: Producitivity does appear stronger but hard to tell if that will persist

By Howard Schneider

COLUMBIA, South Carolina, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Rising productivity is helping businesses ease cost pressures, an aid in the U.S. Federal Reserve's inflation fight, but it is difficult to predict if that will persist and therefore hard to know how monetary policy might need to respond, Richmond Fed president Tom Barkin said on Tuesday.

"I do think productivity is up," Barkin said in comments to reporters. "The hard part with productivity of course is it's not perfectly measured. It's a volatile series."