Survivor Bias and Labor Hoarding

Survivor bias could explain why wages rose during the great depression and may be right now as well. The firms that didn't survive, the companies that went out of business during the great collapse and the great depression were most often low productivity, low paying. So like the survivor bias in any stock index, for example, what happens is that the published wage rate doesn't account for all those low pay, low wage firms that go out of business. And so suddenly those disappear, and what's left are these higher paying companies,. These higher paying jobs, which in the published aggregate looks, makes it look like wages increased.