WASHINGTON — Americans' productivity, a key measure of rising living standards, slowed to a 2.2 percent rate of growth in the last three months of 2000 as the economy weakened.

        Growth in productivity — the amount of output per hour of work — during the October-December quarter followed a 3.0 percent rate in the third quarter, the Labor Department said Tuesday.

        The revised fourth-quarter figure was still a healthy gain and was a better showing than the 2 percent rate of productivity growth many analysts were expecting. But it was a slightly weaker performance than the 2.4 percent growth rate the government previously estimated and was the smallest increase since a 2.1 percent rate in the first quarter of 2000.

        Unit labor costs, a measure of inflation pressures, rose by 4.3 percent in the fourth quarter, according to revised figures. That was up from a 3.2 percent rate the previous quarter.

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