Labor hasn't been losing at all. Wages haven't gone up that much, but total comp has. Companies give their workers a greater portion of their compensation in (untaxed) insurance, rather than in (taxed) wages.
Unless I'm doing something wrong, that graph seems completely wrong. Is it adjusting for inflation?
2000 non-wage compensation per employee is (Stats taken from your first link and 6.2C):
(615,931 * 1,000,000) / (137,228 * 1,000) = 4,488 per employee
2009 non-wage compensation per employee is (Stats taken from your first link and 6.2D):
(1,072,019 * 1,000,000) / (136,089 * 1,000) = 7,877 per employee
Your graph shows an increase of close to 20,000 from 2000 to 2009. If wages were stagnant, non-wage compensation doesn't explain this increase.
Edit to add: if you look at private companies only, which seems fair given this article is about collusion between private companies, the numbers are worse than those mentioned above:
I don't think it adjusts for inflation. Adjusting for inflation, we have total comp per FTE worker of $49.8k in 1998 and $57k in 2009. But you are right, benefits don't explain the entire increase. Wages went up as well, from $47k to $52k (inflation adjusted).
Also, since the article is about collusion between google and apple, we should really be comparing compensation for the best programmers. I admit, I have no idea whether that went up or not.
Your graph has even more flaws than guelo's graph. In addition to having the same flaw I pointed out in his graph (it looks at wages, not comp), it also doesn't give magnitudes at all. All it gives you is relative proportions.
yes, CEOs got huge wage increases, the bottom half was flat. That's how averages work. If Bill Gates walks into a homeless shelter the average net worth of the 10 homeless people and billyG is over a billion!
Did you even look at the graph that you posted? It shows an increase in median wages, not mean wages. Bill Gates walking into a homeless shelter does not affect the median wage. The article it is based on also shows an increase in compensation even at the lower percentiles. From the article:
"Wage growth rates at the 10th and 20th percentiles were only slightly below the median growth rates, increasing by 17 percent and 18 percent, respectively."
"As noted, some economists have argued that relatively large wage gains at the top end of the wage distribution drove the increase in average wages, while median wages grew little if at all. I have shown that, in fact, median wages increased appreciably since 1975—by 28 percent—once benefits were included"
When he says that median wages increased, he is including the insane amount healthcare costs have risen. He is counting what employers pay for health insurance as compensation for workers. This makes sense on some level, but it also makes it clear that the take home money of average workers has stagnated while it has sky rocketed for the super rich. The fact that employers are paying more for healthcare (and we are paying more for it too) is not a sign that things have improved for average workers, in fact it's a sign of the opposite.
In most non-US countries the "tax" people pay for health insurance is a lot lower, and collected by the government instead of private for-profit companies.
http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTa...
Pylab made me a nice graph of total comp (based on tables 6.2D and 6.4D from http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/SelectTable.asp?Selected...):
http://imgur.com/aDwkL