U.S. workers' share of income hits lowest level since 1947
Labor share dropped to 52.8% in Q2 2026 as corporate profits soar and job growth stalls.
What to know
- Labor share of U.S. income hit a record low of 52.8% in Q2 2026, down from 79% in 1970, even as corporate profits reached $2.1 trillion and GDP grew 3.4%.
- Job creation collapsed: just 29,000 jobs added in September 2026 versus economist projections of 90,000, and only 584,000 jobs added in 2025 versus 2 million in 2024.
- Automation and AI are primary drivers; Goldman Sachs estimates AI could displace 25% of work hours and 6–7% of jobs, though offsetting new roles may partially mitigate impact.
- Economists warn of widening K-shaped inequality and jobless growth, with conditions deteriorating for workers while benefiting capital owners and high-income earners.
Automation and AI concentration of wealth are driving the decline; systemic inequality is worsening.
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“I think it also all consistently points to this idea that things are getting worse for workers and much better for billionaires.”
Raymond Robertson · Fortune ↗
“AI automation could displace 25% of all work hours. They predicted that over the course of the AI adoption period, a 15% increase in AI-driven productivity would displace 6% to 7% of jobs, and, at its peak, a 1 million increase in unemployed workers.”
Joseph Briggs and Sarah Dong, Goldman Sachs analysts · Fortune ↗ · Oct 30
Raymond Robertson Labor economist, Texas A&M Bush SchoolJoseph Briggs and Sarah Dong Goldman Sachs analystsBureau of Labor Statistics U.S. government agency
How it unfolded 2 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlesposts
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Fortune publishes in-depth analysis of labor share decline
Fortune releases comprehensive reporting on the historic low in labor share, detailing the disconnect between GDP growth, corporate profitability, and weak employment conditions, gaining significant attention on Hacker News and social platforms.
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Instead of looking at share you could look at each trend separately. They're both going up, but corporate profits are going up more:Corporate profits versus labor income https://fred.stlouisfed.org/blog/2018/08/corporate-profits-v...Why is labor going up? In part due to more hours worked:Nonfarm Business Sector: Hours Worked for All Workers…
2 more of the top 3 · 27 posts in this stretch
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The administration is blocking the IRS data that will show that average Americans did not actually get their taxes reduced by $3000
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Can someone connect the dots for me between "share went down" being "despite GDP went up"? One of those is a percentage and the other is an absolute amount. I would not expect that they would be directly related in and of themselves (in fact I would suspect that that they would move more independently). I am all for the idea that there are harms…
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Economists warn of K-shaped economy and jobless growth
Economic bifurcation between corporate gains and weak labor data raises concerns of widening inequality, with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, as well as jobless growth jeopardizing the workforce.
“Data right now is very mixed. But I think it also all consistently points to this idea that things are getting worse for workers and much better for billionaires.”
— Raymond Robertson -
background
Economists link labor share decline to automation and capital concentration — Raymond Robertson, labor economist at Texas A&M, attributes the declining labor share to rising automation displacing workers while productivity gains concentrate income toward capital owners. Goldman Sachs analysts estimate AI automation could displace 25% of all work hours, with 6–7% of jobs lost and potentially 1 million unemployed workers at peak displacement.
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background
Job creation collapses while unemployment rises — Unemployment ticked up to 4.2% in September 2026. Employers added just 29,000 jobs in September—about one-third of economists' projections—and only 584,000 jobs total in 2025, compared to 2 million in 2024.
Also covered reported alongside — the timeline has no entry for these yet
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first by HN Best, 12d ago · also HN Frontpage
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first by Mastodon, 13d ago · also Fortune
What people are saying 21 voices from 2 sites · best of 27 · verbatim
- Nov 2
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While I think share of capital is a great metric, there are obviously flaws where it could be going on while everyone's lives improved. Which I think is happening to some extent, but to another extent I think folks lives are getting worse in meaningful ways like portion of income spent on basics like housing.Are there 2-3 other key well-measured…
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The U.S. workers have forgotten how to go on strike. The capitalists are just laughing about all those online petitions, social media campaigns and demonstrations. Only big strikes can change things in our society. Your parents and grandparents still knew this.
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This comes on top of other reporting that shows that real wages have been falling behind the inflation rate meaning people feel they are able to afford a more basic lifestyle than they could in the past otherwise all else being equal. That's the general zeitgeist and backdrop and this data seems to sort of complement that as a "oh that makes…
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This is what capitalism is designed to do. Every gain for the working class has been in countering the system.
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It is misleading at this point to call it workers right? Isn't it employees?And the "blue collar" guy in the top photo seems like it is pushing that feeling.Also this mechanic will never change without heavy wealth taxing and regulating prices of essentials like housing. Basically the entire world is in the same situation.Young people should just…
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Capital is non-consumable, so it is nonsensical to speak of workers taking "a share of capital." Perhaps we should speak of GDP, not capital.The reasons why workers are taking a smaller share of GDP are:1. GDP is fake. The government lies about GDP using tricks such as hedonic adjustments.2. Increasing public spending means the government is…
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I forsee this getting fixed by inflation, capital gains tax to stop people avoiding an inflation haircut, and an unrealised gains tax to stop people deferring paying.
- Nov 1
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Both of them are true at the same time because one is measuring a percentage of the other.From the article, the labor share of output is down from ~66% in 1947 to ~53% now. Over the same period, real GDP per capita is up ~370%:https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/a939rx0q048sbeaWe can easily multiply these together. The labor share of real GDP per…
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How does this tie in with the opposing view’s narrative that gdp per capita has been increasing since the industrial revolution? I mean, this is an issue I’d actually like to take a side with—I do in fact dislike it whenever the latter statistic comes up because the actual and lived experience of cost of living and capital accrual in the present…
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Also productivity costs more in tooling than ever before per worker, so it's not a surprise that a smaller amount of capital goes to humans when the gains are majority from capital outlays, not labor improvements.Here's BLS data for total cost to employ for the last 25 years. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ECIALLCIVNote how much it has…
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"Share"? What does that mean? Is Fortune confused about the difference between employees and owners?
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The US also kept much higher marginal tax rates for a few more decades after that, which helped the common people by disincentivizing the post-Reagan short-term-financial-games profit-maximization and wealth-and-income-consolidation.
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Machine intelligence could drive as much transfer from labor to capital in the next decade as the previous wage-to-financial economy produced in forty years.This will push wealth concentration in leading OECD economies beyond the inequality seen in Brazil and Mexico.
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It's amazing how even though this is happening, so many of the people on this list (and those who aspire to be there) have gone to straight up war with the public. Also curious how many are militant Zionists:
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The US had a fiscal surplus under Clinton and would have one today if it weren’t for the Bush and Trump tax cuts.Figure 1:
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In a completely unrelated note, corporate profits are at a historical high. Up 22.8% from the same period last year.
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So here's what I don't get: The United States is the world's largest consumer market. From what I can find, personal consumption expenditures (PCE) account for about two-thirds to 70% of total US economic output. We live and die on consumer spending and confidence.So next we automate the bejeebus out of this economy with AI robots and Elon…
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That, and there is a looming Social Security crisis due in 2032. Fiscal responsibility hasn't been either party's (or voters') priority for the past two decades, and it's probably going to take another disaster to put it back on the table.
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This shouldn't be a surprise. The US came out of WWII with similarly high debt to GDP. They only corrected that through financial repression, and that's likely to be their only chance of lowering that debt ratio today.If we don't spend the next few decades skating by while the currency is debased under our noses, I assume its because there's a…
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Sounds like the policies that were put in place are doing what they were designed to do, and directing money to where they were intended to.The work on technology to take the place of policy is proceeding, thought slower than the leadership would prefer.
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A disaster. Economy is a flow of capital, it cycles up. USA needs the general public to have money for necessities as well as a little more for saving and then extras.Top earnings come from the support of 1000s of participants with lesser earnings. This is an unhealthy economic trend. It's more than a stagnation risk.Issues like these are created…