'Workers are more productive than ever, but their pay hasn't kept pace while top 1% wages have skyrocketed,' says EconomicPolicy.
"Workers are more productive than ever, but their pay hasn't kept pace while top 1% wages have skyrocketed," says the Economic Policy Institute."Quiet quitting"—an allegedly new trend characterized by workers performing only their required job duties and no more—has been getting a lot of attention in recent weeks, but the defining trend of the past 40 years of U.S. economic history is"quiet fleecing," and we should be talking much more about it.
To illustrate what is meant by"quiet fleecing," EPI pointed to an animated chart showing that between 1948 and 1979, the nation's economy and working-class wages grew largely in tandem. Although wages began to flatline during the 1970s crisis of stagflation, a 118% increase in productivity during this 31-year period—when Keynesianism was still dominant—was mirrored by a 107% increase in typical worker pay.
"Workers are more productive than ever," EPI noted Friday,"but employers haven't been sharing the wealth. In fact, they've been fleecing workers for 40 years when it comes to having pay rise with productivity."At the same time that typical worker pay has remained largely flat despite climbing productivity, the share of income captured by the top 1% has soared.