> believe. This got me thinking, what happens to the difference between
what
> workers get and what the economy over-all gets (the 0.5-0.9%)? My
thinking
> was that if one divides the economy into two slices of one pie, with one
> slice being wages paid to workers and the other slice being income paid to
> the owners of capital, the long term trend is for workers to get an
> increasingly smaller share; and at infinity, the percent going to workers
is
> zero if current trends continue.
Not necessarily - the 133,000 employment figure reflects, I believe only wage workers, and excluded self employed persons i.e. "independent" contractors that are becoming an increasing share of the labor force. Moreover, the term "wage" does not equal "labor cost" the latter includes benefits, social security tax etc. It is my understanding that while the wages are stagnant or declining in real terms over time, labor cost is not due to increase of benefits (mainly cost of health insurance).
Another caveat is related to the composition of the GDP, which contrary to your stipulation includes three (not two) components: cost of labor, profits (i.e. remuneration of the owners of capital) as well as property income i.e. rents, interests, royalties, returns to investments - which include those earned by retirement accounts, therefore cannot be counted as income of the capitalist class alone. I would imagine that the latter are an increasing share of the GDP (Doug?), which by definition makes the share of wages smaller.
A third element is the growth of the labor force by including women (who were used be outside the labor force). The net effect of that change is increased income per household, even though the income per worker (both in absolute and relative to the GDP terms) may be decreasing.
So the bottom line is that the issue is far more complex than you stipulate. Had you considered changes in the labor cost (not just wages), composition of the labor force (or rather economically active population), and the actual composition of the GDP, you may have obtained a different picture of the labor's share of the pie. The issue is further muddled by the fact that the income structure of the household changed over time, which probably resulted in a net increase per household (but not necessarily per capita).
These are my two cents.
Wojtek