Why Can’t Americans Get a Raise?
The most obvious answer seems to be that the workforce keeps growing relative to the demand for that work. Wage stagnation began at the same time the number of women in the workplace started to grow. While a corresponding increase in demand with the supply of workers would have kept incomes moving upward, women were actually already consumers. They had to eat, be sheltered and clothed, etc. even when men made up the vast majority of the workforce.<p>The rate of the growing female workforce itself started to stagnant around the 90s and 2000s, but a new worker had fully emerged on the scene by that point: The robot. It&#x27;s a slight misconception that robots eliminate jobs. In reality, they compete for them just like people do. They are another worker in the supply of workers. And while robots bring new demand, as they didn&#x27;t exist before, it is not proportional to what they can create like with humans.<p>And so, increasing supply over the rate of what increases to demand exist, and you get downward price pressure.