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Labor’s Share Plummets, Capital’s Share Soars: New Fed Data
And yet they want labor to pay all the taxes.
http://www.nationalmemo.com/labors-share-plummets-capitals-share-soars-new-fed-data/
Powerful new data shows just how badly American workers are faring in the 21st Century, as corporate profits soar ever higher. Labor and capital share in the nation’s economic output, but an awful trend line for working people appears in data released Wednesday night by the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis.
Dean Baker, the liberal economist who studies income at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told me this “redistribution from workers to capital, on this scale, has never happened before in the post-World War II era.”
The chart showing a falling share for labor is the “flip side of record profits,” Baker added. “With unemployment still at extraordinarily high levels, workers have little bargaining power. This means that employers are able to take almost all of the gains from the economy’s productivity growth.”
Here is the Fed chart showing the rise of corporate profits for the same period beginning in 1950, with only that one steep but brief drop during the Great Recession:
Dean Baker, the liberal economist who studies income at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told me this “redistribution from workers to capital, on this scale, has never happened before in the post-World War II era.”
The chart showing a falling share for labor is the “flip side of record profits,” Baker added. “With unemployment still at extraordinarily high levels, workers have little bargaining power. This means that employers are able to take almost all of the gains from the economy’s productivity growth.”
Here is the Fed chart showing the rise of corporate profits for the same period beginning in 1950, with only that one steep but brief drop during the Great Recession:
