WORKERS ARE GETTING A BIT MORE OF THE ECONOMIC PIE

“American workers are reaping fewer of the gains of a growing economy in the form of pay and benefits. Shareholders are reaping more in the form of corporate profits. That shift has been one of the most important economic stories of the last several decades, and it is the key to understanding stagnant wages for middle-class workers and a soaring stock market in the last quarter-century.

“Here is what is less widely understood: That trend appears to be reversing itself.

“It is early and the reversal may not last. And it certainly hasn’t fully undone the shift underway since the 1980s. But the numbers are quite clear that in the last couple of years workers have claimed a bigger piece of the economic pie and shareholders a smaller one.

“The evidence available so far in 2016 — steady growth in wages and weak earnings for publicly traded companies — suggests that the reversal is continuing this year.”

Neil Irwin, “Workers Are Getting a Bit More of the Economic Pie,” New York Times, May 3, 2016 [in print May 6, 2016, page B1].