0.3% — Increase in U.S. hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, since the economic recovery began.

The labor market may be improving, but U.S. workers have yet to share much in the productivity and profits they’ve helped generate during the recovery.

From mid-2009 through the end of 2010, output per hour at U.S. nonfarm businesses rose 5.2% as companies found ways to squeeze more from their existing workers. But the lion’s share of that gain went to shareholders in the form of record profits, rather than to workers in the form of raises. Hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, rose only 0.3%, according to the Labor Department. In other words, companies shared only 6% of productivity gains with their workers. That compares to 58% since records began in 1947.

To some extent, it stands to reason that workers would do poorly in the early stages of a recovery. Unemployment is high, so they have little bargaining power. But that’s not what has happened during most of the recoveries of the last 60 years. Workers typically received at least half of productivity gains in the form of higher wages. Only in the recovery from the deep recession of the early 1980s, when inflation-adjusted hourly wages fell 0.4%, did workers do worse than they have in this recovery. Back then, though, inflation was much higher: In nominal terms, wages rose 5.7%, compared to 3.1% now.

To be sure, wages are expected to rise a bit faster this year. And to the extent that raises remain small, they help insulate the economy from the kind of spiraling wage and price increases that typically lead to runaway inflation.

But that might not be much consolation on payday, particularly with the price of regular gasoline near $3.50 a gallon.