Though we’re in the middle of a data drought right now, with the federal shutdown cutting off the flow of government economic data, there’s been plenty of evidence in recent months that the labor market has slowed to a crawl.

The last four monthly jobs reports were fairly muted, job openings have been trending lower and job recruiters are seeing a pretty mixed picture, as companies hold off on making new investments.

But there is a force at work in this sluggish labor economy that could provide the juice it needs to pick up the pace again: labor productivity.

Hiring is a lot weaker than it was back when companies were scrambling to staff up after the pandemic. That means people are staying in their jobs longer.

“And as people have gotten used to their new roles that they got during the pandemic high-turnover period, they’ve been more productive in their jobs,” said George Pearkes, macro strategist at Bespoke Investment Group.

He said businesses have made themselves more productive since the pandemic, too.

Imagine you run a bakery: “Maybe you’ve rearranged the layout of your bakeries, or change your production process somehow, and suddenly, you’re now producing a lot more than you were, per worker, relative to a few years ago,” Pearkes said.

And producing more bread means generating more profit.

“Eventually businesses will have to step in and OK, if we want to sell more bread, we need to hire more bakers,” he said.

In other words, strong productivity growth can send a signal to businesses that they could rake in even more profits if they hire more workers.

That’s why Pearkes expects hiring overall to pick up.

“Whether that’s in the next couple months or in the next couple quarters, is hard to say. But at some point it’ll be hard for firms to grow without investing more in labor,” he said.

Right now, many companies are nervous about hiring, said Nicole Cervi, an economist at Wells Fargo.

“And so even if you are a firm, let’s say, that’s enjoying productivity growth, you haven’t necessarily turned around and tried to act on that because you’re uncertain about how demand for your product is going to evolve in these next few months, or in the next year,” she said.

But, Cervi said, productivity growth can boost consumer demand, because more-productive businesses can afford to raise wages.

“Wage growth has actually been pretty steady. And so I think that’s the evidence of where you’re seeing that firms are passing along some of those productivity gains via real income growth to consumers,” she said.

Cervi said that should support the labor market over the next year.