A World Ruled by Persons, Not Machines A World Ruled by Persons, Not Machines
By RAPHAELE CHAPPE
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020
Long-term macroeconomic trends such as the decline of the labor share in total national income, the stagnation of wages for average workers, and the widening wage distribution suggest that the U.S. economy has been failing to deliver inclusive economic growth for workers for some time now. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, though the unemployment rate in the U.S. had actually dropped to a 50-year low of 3.5 percent, leading
The Economist to celebrate an unprecedented jobs boom, labor markets were in reality a lot more precarious than this figure would have suggested. In past decades jobless recoveries have become more prevalent, and most new jobs created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis were in low-wage occupations rather than “quality jobs.”