Shopping in a Whole Foods supermarket in New York City, August 26, 2026.Richard B. Levine/Zuma
It’s the day after Labor Day, and it’s not a great day to be a worker. New data released this month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the share of economic growth that translates to worker compensation is now at the lowest level ever recorded. Now, 52.8 percent of that wealth goes into workers’ pocketbooks. For comparison, that number—known to economists as the “labor share”—was at about 65 percent immediately following World War II, when the government began collecting data.
“Since approximately the start of this century, the S&P 500 stock index has gained about 600 percent,” as Rob Wile recently reported for NBC News. “Over the same period, inflation-adjusted worker earnings have climbed just 12.5 percent.” Corporate profits are at a record high. Many Americans, meanwhile, are doing things like buying groceries on credit and taking out “buy now, pay later” loans to afford electricity or rent.
There are a few different factors that might be blamed for this situation: corporate consolidation, tariff-related price-gouging, and the capital-intensive, labor-light AI boom among them. But this trend—GDP goes up, but workers take home a slimmer share of that money—has been building for fifty years, long before AI or the Trump presidency.
“I think it’s really disturbing news for workers,” Joseph McCartin, professor of labor history at Georgetown University, told Talking Points Memo back in May, when the labor share hit 54.1 percent. That was, at the time, the lowest level on record. In the intervening months, the labor share has plunged yet again. “It shows that even while the economy is growing, workers are getting a smaller and smaller share of the economic pie.”
