this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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Work Reform

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15086405

Bureau of Labor Statistics releases latest estimate of how much labor receives of national income, showing bleak decline

When Jesse Motte began working at a Starbucks inside a Target store in Columbia, South Carolina, more than two years ago, $15 an hour sounded great. He was excited to start because it was the most he had ever made after working for years in the service industry.

The excitement has dissipated due to his inconsistent and erratic work schedule, the rising costs of necessities and the minuscule raises he and his co-workers receive annually. His most recent annual wage increase was $0.37 an hour.

Motte is not alone. This week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released  its latest estimate for the share labor receives of national income for the first quarter of 2024. The statistics shows the income workers receive compared to the productivity their labor generates.

According to BLS, this income share has declined for non-farm workers from around two-thirds, 64.1% in the first quarter of 2001, to 55.8% in the first quarter of 2024.

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[–] Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world 12 points 6 months ago

A lot of the hangup I see coming from older generations is that around "unskilled labour" that is the hardest to combat. They don't get that labour is requiring less people and less skill in general. My Dad's era something as simple as utilizing maps and finding your way around a stretch of wilderness or even a city was a matter of experience. There was strength in how irreplaceable personal experience was. Now it's GPS assisted and basically any idiot can get where their going in a city they have never been before utilizing the fastest and most direct route. The same goes for computer assisted and manufacturing jobs. High levels of skill that take years to master is now largely something utilized for hobbies or bespoke craft and the fact that to a capitalistic sense we are individually depreciating in value to common pawns is something that is being banked on. The power of labour is dwindling on both an individual and mass scale. There is less skilled labour needed and less labour needed overall. We are all more speedily than ever becoming more replacable with any random body off the street.

But the idea of a meritocracy where the harder jobs are rewarded more remains and makes sense to people. They cling to that hardest. They just don't see that making all the jobs unskilled and making unskilled jobs worth absolute peanuts that pushes hardship onto vast swaths of the population is causing the whole system to fail.