A little positive feedback at work can go a long way toward improving assemblers' long-term mental health and well-being. Engineers at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and the European Factory2Fit research consortium are studying the effects of work performance.

WASHINGTON—U.S. worker productivity accelerated at a modest 0.9 percent annual pace between April and June after dropping the previous quarter.

WASHINGTON—U.S. worker productivity shrank in the final three months of 2012, although the decline was caused by temporary factors. Productivity contracted at an annual rate of 2 percent in the October-December quarter, the biggest drop since the first quarter of 2011.