Even though worker productivity has risen 45 percent since the 1970's, worker's wages have not risen in kind.

Depressingly, the release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2009 third quarter report last week showed more of the same.

• Non-farm labor productivity grew at a faster rate (8.1 percent) than hourly compensation (5.4 percent).
• Unit labor costs [a gauge of inflation and profit pressures closely watched by the Federal Reserve] in nonfarm businesses fell 2.5 percent.
• Manufacturing sector productivity grew 13.4 percent in the third quarter of 2009, as unit labor costs fell 6.1 percent.

Unemployment in the U.S. is the highest it's been since the Great Depression, and a large number of businesses have been forced to cut labor costs--which they do by getting rid of workers. However, manufacturing expectations don't reflect these reduced workforces. Rather, workers are just expected to do the work equivalent of 1.5 to 2 full-time jobs. Mass layoffs have also resulted in a fear of job loss that has greatly eroded workers' bargaining power.

Let's put all of this together: Workers' productivity has increased at a negative costs to employers. Companies are keeping a bigger share of profits, and their labor costs are falling--all while workers' wages remain relatively stagnant. What does this all mean? CNN blog Anderson Cooper 360 has the idea:

While [this] does signal inflation is under control, it also means workers are feeling a tight squeeze on their wages.

Firedoglake also has an explanation for the phenomena:

There used to be an unspoken deal between labor and capital that profits from productivity increases would be split, wages would rise as productivity increased. That deal was broken in 1980, and since then, capital has taken all the money, at least the part that didn't go to pay bonuses on Wall Street. Wages have been stagnant.

Even as workers take on more responsibilities and work longer hours to enable their employers to produce the same results with fewer employees, they are not sharing in the wealth they helped create.

If the minimum wage had moved in tandem with the vast increases in productivity over the past 30 years, it would be $19/hour. Instead, more than 28 million people--about a quarter of the working-age workforce--who work full time yet still earn less than the income that marks the federal poverty line for a family of four.