demonstrate corporate efficiency and return
value to shareholders.
Workers since the 1970s have been “denigrated
and devalued as stakeholders,” said Adam Seth
Litwin, associate professor of industrial and
labor relations at Cornell University’s School of
Industrial and Labor Relations. “When workers
had more power, they had a larger share of that
income and of that income growth. They don’t
have that now.”
White, the data center manager, said he feels
grateful for the work he has now. But his pay
is just 70% of what it once was. And there are
fewer opportunities to advance.
“They may or may not care about you too much,
personally,” White said of the tech services firm
that is now his employer. “You’re filling a slot for
them for that client. They’re not as engaged.”
The median pay of CEOs of companies in the
S&P 500 index who have been in their job for at
least two years jumped from $9.6 million in 2011
to $12 million last year. To earn as much as the
CEO, a typical employee at most big companies
in 2018 would have to work 158 years.
Ken-Hou Lin, a sociology professor at the
University of Texas at Austin, said that before
the 1980s, U.S. public companies as a whole
distributed about a third of their earnings to
shareholders. In the decades since, shareholder
payouts have surged — in some years exceeding
the total profits earned across those companies.
Since 2000, Lin said, almost all corporate
profits have been plowed back into the stock
market, rewarding investors with buybacks
and dividends. U.S. corporations in the S&P 500
spent a record $806 billion on stock buybacks in
2018, exceeding the high of nearly $590 billion
set in 2007.
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