Despite a better-than-expected jobs report Wednesday, there’s a wider, inconvenient fact about life in the 21st century: labor takes home an ever smaller share of the economic pie. The pattern has been accelerating for nearly 50 years, in fact.
In the third quarter of 2025, the share of gross domestic income going to employees’ wages and benefits fell to 51.4%, down from 58% in 1980, according to U.S. Commerce Department data, as noted by The Wall Street Journal’s chief economics commentator, Greg Ip. Over the same period, corporate profits, or the leftover cash used to grow a business or pay owners, have been on the rise, reaching nearly 12% of the share of gross domestic income in the third quarter, up from 6%.
