Labor Market Monopsony: Trends, Consequences, and Policy Responses
COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS ISSUE BRIEF OCTOBER 2016 LABOR MARKET MONOPSONY: TRENDS, CONSEQUENCES, AND POLICY RESPONSES Introduction Figure 1: Labor Share of Income, Nonfarm Business Sector, 1948-2016 Percent In September, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 68 in 2015, the typical household saw its income grow 66 by $2,800, or 5.2 percent, the fastest rate on record. 64 Over the course of this business cycle, average annual wage growth has been higher than any 62 business cycle since the early 1970s. This is real 60 2016:Q2 progress toward higher incomes for working 58 Americans—a central goal of many of the policy initiatives the Obama Administration has undertaken 56 since 2009. 54 1948 1958 1968 1978 1988 1998 2008 Note: Shading denotes recession. But while these gains are a step in the right direction, Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Productivity and Costs more work remains to fully address long-term challenges of slow wage growth and rising inequality. At the same time, labor income itself has become Over the past several decades, only the highest increasingly unequally divided. Researchers have earners have seen steady wage gains; for most focused on the divergence between worker skills and workers, wage growth has been sluggish and has employer needs—a challenge brought about by failed to keep pace with gains in productivity (CEA technological change and a trend in educational 2015, Ch. 3). Though the slowdown in wage growth investments that, while rising, has not kept pace with is partly due to a slowdown in productivity growth demand, which has risen even faster (Autor 2014; since the 1970s, the share of income accruing to Katz and Murphy 1992; Goldin and Katz 2007).
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