Over time the number of work hours which the working class labors 'for itself' decreases in order to provide returns for an ever increasing pile of capital controlled by the capitalist class. Following Marx's labor theory of value, this can be seen in how increasing labor productivity in the past 30 years in the United States has been accompanied by stagnant wage growth. In 2016 average labor productivity in the U.S. was $70.00 an hour while the average minimum wage was around $10.00 an hour meaning that capital absorbed 6/7ths of the value produced by the average minimum wage laborer.