Remember when labor, as an economic actor with clout, was back?

No? Me neither, but for a fleeting moment in 2020, a measure of American workers’ share of overall US economic output stabilized after a more or less uninterrupted decline dating to the late 1990s.

Well, guess what? Not only is that metric falling again, it accelerated sharply to the downside in Q3, according to this week’s productivity update from the BLS. Have a look:

America’s had two economic populist presidents in a row, one left-leaning the other right, and it doesn’t matter: Labor’s plight continues to worsen.

Note that Joe Biden was widely viewed as the most pro-labor president in living memory and Trump’s made his political career cynically advocating for the forgotten American Everyman.

The same data betrayed the second-sharpest increase in productivity since 2009 hot on the heels of a likewise robust gain the prior quarter.

That’s employee output per hour, and while it’s good news for corporates when productivity’s expanding rapidly, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that efficiency gains often come at the expense of workers one way or the other.

In the same release, unit labor costs notched a second straight quarterly decline, the first back-to-back drop in nearly half a dozen years. There’s more than a little concern that we’re seeing the beginning of AI’s impact on workers.

To be clear: Everyone wants a productivity renaissance, particularly to the extent that can ameliorate inflation and thereby free up the Fed to cut rates further. But if the revolution comes at the cost of too many human jobs… well, that’d be bad.

Trump touted the back-to-back outsized productivity gains on his social media platform. He didn’t mention the record low for labor’s share of the proverbial pie. (“Let them eat cake! Or, actually, don’t. Let them starve.”)

Corporate profits, you’re gently reminded, have never been fatter.