The economic pie is growing, but the share going to American workers is at a record low. Friday’s jobs report is expected to show that Americans are not on their way to getting a bigger cut.

Much is at stake in the Labor Department report, which economists predict will reflect unemployment stagnating at 8.5 percent in January. Lackluster job growth could bolster the Republican argument that President Obama’s economic policies are leaving American workers behind.

The economy has been growing now for 10 straight quarters. It has even made up the ground lost from the recession, and the United States now churns out more goods and services than it did before the downturn began in 2007. But that output is being produced with six million fewer workers, despite population growth.

As a result, the share of income produced in the country that is flowing to workers’ bank accounts has been steadily shrinking.

Of every dollar of income earned in the United States in the third quarter of 2011 — the latest period for which data is available — just 44 cents went to workers’ wages and salaries. That is the smallest share since the government began keeping track in 1947, according to the Commerce Department, and it continues a trend that predates the Great Recession. The average share of national income going to wages, salaries and benefits (like health insurance) over the last 50 years has been about 57.6 cents on the dollar.

Commerce Department, via Haver Analytics



If you include workers’ benefits in the calculation for the third quarter, the share of national income received by workers rises to 54.5 percent. But that measure is also at its lowest level since 1955.

On the other hand, American businesses are doing extremely well.

Tepid job growth, stagnant wages for existing employees and growing international demand for American products have all helped corporate profit margins reach all-time highs, according to two different measures from the Department of Commerce and from earnings per share in the S.&P. 500.

Goldman Sachs

As a result, it is primarily corporations and their shareholders, rather than workers, who are benefiting from the American recovery.

Of every dollar in income earned in the United States, more than 10 cents goes to corporations. That’s up from 7.3 cents per dollar of income when the recession began at the end of 2007.

Commerce Department, via Haver Analytics

The economy is not a zero-sum game; when the overall economic pie grows, the size of each slice can become bigger too. That means corporate gains and worker gains can be complementary, and in the United States they usually are. After all, companies need workers to help them make all the stuff that earns them profits.

What is happening, though, is that many companies are sitting on their cash or investing it in capital equipment rather than investing it in new workers.

This trend cannot go on forever, of course; there are only so many additional goods and services that can be squeezed out of an existing work force, even with new technologies that make workers more productive.

The question is how long it will take for companies to pick up the pace of hiring and raising wages, and by extension — though not for altruistic reasons — help workers get a bigger share of the pie.

Friday’s report on hiring in January should provide some enlightenment on this question.

The nation has had a net gain in jobs for 15 consecutive months — or five quarters, exactly half as long as it has been expanding its output. In those 15 months, the country has averaged a net gain of 137,000 jobs a month. That is about the number needed just to keep up with population growth.

It is also almost exactly the number that economists expect Friday’s report to show for January. The median forecast is 135,000 jobs, compared with 200,000 jobs added in December.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

If the forecasts are accurate, then, in January the nation’s employers did nothing to shrink the backlog of unemployed workers. And if so, they did nothing to narrow the gap between the recovery gains going to labor and those going to the corporate sector.