The Wage Share of the National Income

Wage share of national income is a proxy for the balance of class forces in a capitalist economy. The ratio of total value to the value that workers are receiving acts as an index of how much they're able to get out of the system. Over the long term, what you see is a pretty sharp decline in the labor share of income. This correlates closely with what we know to be te the sort of institutional trajectory of workers organizations in this country. And so if you look at the wager over time, you can sort of get a sense, i think, of how strong labor is.