Measuring labor's share of an economy's aggregate income seems straightforward, at least in principle. Count up wage and salary income, along with the value of benefits provided to employees, and divide it by total income. However, one fundamental concept of labor's share in macroeconomic theory...

Alan Krueger (1999) provides a measure of "raw" labor's share for the US postwar economy based on Mincerian regressions using Census data on individual earnings, schooling, and work experience. He finds that raw labor's share fell by over 8 percent from 1959 through 1996 to under 5 percent of...