"All of These Other Forms of Worker Leverage Have Been Decimated"

"Economists point to the long-term decline in worker bargaining power as part of the reason that employees' paychecks are not rising right now. The share of employed workers who are members of a union has fallen in half since the 1980s. States have eroded labor standards and hampered collective bargaining. As a result, it is harder for workers to demand higher paychecks, year after year after year.
"'Bargaining powers are additive,' said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank. 'You get them not just from the tight labor market, but also from your union, and also from binding labor standards. When you have this big erosion in this set of things that give you bargaining power, it takes a tighter and tighter labor market and a lower and lower unemployment rate to translate into strong wage growth.'"

Annie Lowrey at The Atlantic explains why "[t]he central paradox of the Trump economy is that widespread concerns about labor shortages coexist with widespread complaints about low wages."