IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pri/indrel/413.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Measuring Labor's Share

Author

Listed:
  • Alan B. Krueger

    (Princeton University and NBER)

Abstract

This paper considers conceptual and practical issues that arise in measuring labor's share of national income. Most importantly: How are workers defined? How is compensation defined? The current definition of labor compensation used by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) includes the salary of business owners and payments to retired workers in labor compensation. An alternative series to the BEA's standard series is presented. In addition, a simple method for decomposing labor compensation into a component due to "raw labor" and a component due to human capital is presented. Raw labor's share of national income is estimated using Census and CPS data. The share of national income attributable to raw labor increased from 9.6 percent to 13 percent between 1939 and 1959, remained at 12-13 percent between 1959 and 1979, and then fell to 5 percent by 1996.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan B. Krueger, 1999. "Measuring Labor's Share," Working Papers 792, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    • Handle: RePEc:pri:indrel:413
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dataspace.princeton.edu/bitstream/88435/dsp01f1881k89j/1/413.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Card, David & Krueger, Alan B, 1992. "Does School Quality Matter? Returns to Education and the Characteristics of Public Schools in the United States," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(1), pages 1-40, February.
    2. Douglas Gollin, 2002. "Getting Income Shares Right," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(2), pages 458-474, April.
    3. Oliver J. Blanchard, 1997. "The Medium Run," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 28(2), pages 89-158.
    4. Barry Bosworth & George L. Perry, 1994. "Productivity and Real Wages: Is There a Puzzle?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 25(1), pages 317-343.
    5. N. I. Stone, 1945. "The Beginnings of the National Bureau of Economic Research," NBER Chapters, in: The National Bureau's First Quarter-Century, pages 5-10, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. James R. Spletzer & Katharine G. Abraham & Jay C. Stewart, 1999. "Why Do Different Wage Series Tell Different Stories?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 34-39, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Remi Bazillier & Boris Najman, 2017. "Labour and Financial Crises: Is Labour Paying the Price of the Crisis?," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 59(1), pages 55-76, March.
    2. Daniele Checchi & Cecilia García‐Peñalosa, 2010. "Labour Market Institutions and the Personal Distribution of Income in the OECD," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 77(307), pages 413-450, July.
    3. Luis Díez Catalán, 2018. "The labor share in the service economy," Working Papers 18/09, BBVA Bank, Economic Research Department.
    4. repec:pra:mprapa:43050 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Kerekes, Monika, 2007. "Analyzing patterns of economic growth: a production frontier approach," Discussion Papers 2007/15, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    6. Danny Givon, 2006. "Factor Replacement versus Factor Substitution, Mechanization and Asymptotic Harrod Neutrality," DEGIT Conference Papers c011_028, DEGIT, Dynamics, Economic Growth, and International Trade.
    7. Roberto Torrini, 2015. "Labour, Profit and Housing Rent Shares in Italian GDP: Long-Run Trends and Recent Patterns," Politica economica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 3, pages 275-314.
    8. Antràs Pol, 2004. "Is the U.S. Aggregate Production Function Cobb-Douglas? New Estimates of the Elasticity of Substitution," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 1-36, April.
    9. Chad Turner & Robert Tamura & Sean Mulholland, 2013. "How important are human capital, physical capital and total factor productivity for determining state economic growth in the United States, 1840–2000?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 319-371, December.
    10. Alvarez-Cuadrado, Francisco, 2008. "Growth outside the stable path: Lessons from the European reconstruction," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 568-588, April.
    11. Luciano Fanti & Luca Gori, 2010. "Economic Growth and Welfare in a Neoclassical Overlapping Generations Growth Model with Minimum Wages and Consumption Taxes," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 24(3), pages 238-262, September.
    12. Barry T. Hirsch & Edward J. Schumacher, 2001. "Private Sector Union Density and the Wage Premium: Past, Present, and Future ," Journal of Labor Research, Transaction Publishers, vol. 22(3), pages 487-518, July.
    13. Daudey, Emilie & Decreuse, Bruno, 2006. "Higher education, employers’ monopsony power and the labour share in OECD countries," MPRA Paper 3631, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Drautzburg, Thorsten & Guerron-Quintana, Pablo A., 2017. "Political Distribution Risk and Aggregate Fluctuations," CEPR Discussion Papers 12187, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. repec:dgr:rugggd:gd-115 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Christopher Tsoukis & Frédéric Tournemaine, 2013. "Status In A Canonical Macro Model: Labour Supply, Growth And Inequality," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 81(s2), pages 65-92, October.
    17. Daniele Checchi & Cecilia García-Peñalosa, 2008. "Labour market institutions and income inequality [‘Globalisation and the great U-turn: Income inequality trends in 16 OECD countries’]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 23(56), pages 602-649.
    18. repec:ecb:ecbwps:20141800 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Wei-Bin Zhang, 2017. "Discrimination and Inequality in an Integrated Walrasian-General-Equilibrium and Neoclassical-Growth Theory," Asian Journal of Economic Modelling, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 5(1), pages 57-76, March.
    20. Bae-Geun Kim, 2016. "Explaining movements of the labor share in the Korean economy: factor substitution, markups and bargaining power," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 14(3), pages 327-352, September.
    21. Alessandro Bellocchi & Giovanni Marin & Giuseppe Travaglini, 2021. "The Great Fall of Labor Share:Micro Determinants for EU Countries Over 2011-2019," Working Papers 2102, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Department of Economics, Society & Politics - Scientific Committee - L. Stefanini & G. Travaglini, revised 2021.
    22. Willman, Alpo, 2007. "Sequential optimization, front-loaded information, and U.S. consumption," Working Paper Series 765, European Central Bank.
    23. Drautzburg, Thorsten & Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Guerrón-Quintana, Pablo, 2021. "Bargaining shocks and aggregate fluctuations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N62 - Economic History - - Manufacturing and Construction - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-
    • N65 - Economic History - - Manufacturing and Construction - - - Asia including Middle East

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pri:indrel:413. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bobray Bordelon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/irprius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.