Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers

Justin Wolfers and Bloomberg's Stacey Vanek Smith pick through a week of confusing economic news on the latest episode of Off the Clock.
First up, inflation. Inflation came in at 3.4% — not great, not terrible — but here's the part that stings: prices are still rising faster than wages and the average American paycheck buys less than it did a year ago. They also dig into the July jobs report and why it was a real jolt: the economy lost 23,000 jobs when forecasters expected a gain of 80,000, and earlier months got revised down too.
Then Stacey talks to Justin about how lab-grown diamonds have absolutely crushed prices in this luxury industry (a $6,000 stone now sells for $10 at Walmart). This prompted a fascinating discussion on the diamond-water paradox, thinking at the margin, and why the AI shock to "cognitive work" may be the labor market's version of the same thing.
Finally, Justin and Stacey cap off the episode with another round of Chart versus Chart. Be sure to vote for your favorite on the channel homepage for Platypus Economics.
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Justin Wolfers sits down for The Professor Is In to answer your follow-up questions about labor's declining share of income — the reason a soaring market can coexist with wages that feel stuck. He explains that this isn't just an American story: across industrialized countries, workers have been getting a smaller cut of the pie for decades, which points less to any one country's politics and more at shared forces — bigger "superstar" firms, weaker union bargaining power, and a shared intellectual culture across the developed world.
Justin also unpacks monopsony power — what happens to your wages when only a handful of employers are hiring near you — with the classic example of Hershey, Pennsylvania. Then he gets to what we can actually do about it: stronger, more constructive unions, Australia's superannuation system that turns workers into owners of the stock market, and the "MeganBot 2000" thought experiment that shows why AI could either be utopia or dystopia depending on one very important thing — ownership.
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The stock market keeps breaking records, but your paycheck doesn't feel like it. In this episode of Diving In, Justin Wolfers explains that disconnect with one number: labor's share of income has fallen to 54.4 cents on the dollar, the lowest share on record. And it’s significantly less than the two-thirds that was common for most of the last century.
Justin fires up the actual data to stress-test the claim — accounting for depreciation and tax-driven accounting tricks. But the decline is real and still stands. Then he sizes what it means for you: a five-point drop in labor's share works out to about $10,000 a year in lost wages for the average worker — while the gains flow overwhelmingly to the very top, where the richest households collect over half of all capital income.
Why is this happening? Giant firms that grow sales faster than payroll, weaker worker bargaining power, and globalization that lets your job move elsewhere. And now AI could either make you more productive and better paid — or automate your job and hand the upside to owners. How we slice that pie is up to us.
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Cited Research:
The Rise of Pass-Throughs and the Decline of the Labor Share: https://zidar.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf3371/files/syzz2022.pdf
Not a Typical Firm: Capital–Labor Substitution and Firms’ Labor Shares: https://www.econ.queensu.ca/sites/econ.queensu.ca/files/HubmerRestrepo_NotTypicalFirm_Oct2023.pdf
Automation and New Tasks: How Technology Displaces and Reinstates Labor: https://shapingwork.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/acemoglu-restrepo-2019-automation-and-new-tasks-how-technology-displaces-and-reinstates-labor.pdf
One more thing: When I create these videos, I often crunch a few numbers in Stata, with whom I’ve got a paid partnership. Today, I used it to compare labor's share of income with and without depreciation.
You can follow along with me here: https://platypuseconomics.com/stata/labor_share_worksheet.pdf
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The newest inflation report is out, and Justin Wolfers walks you through what actually matters. Annual inflation is running at 3.4% — well above what the Fed wants, and high enough to explain why the checkout line still feels uncomfortable. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy to predict where prices are headed, sits at a better — but still high — 2.5%. July's monthly numbers came in almost exactly as economists expected, which is why the report is less "news" than confirmation: prices are still rising quickly, just about the way everyone thought they would.
Here's what it means for you. Prices are outpacing wages, so real (inflation-adjusted) pay has fallen over the past year — the average paycheck buys less than it did twelve months ago. Energy is the main culprit: gas is up 25% over the year, diesel 39%, and airfares have shot up on the back of it. If you're flying anytime soon, that ticket is a whole lot pricier. Justin also digs into the tariff story, the burrito discourse, a record 16% drop in lettuce prices, and the Fed's tough spot between stubborn inflation and slowing employment growth.
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In this bonus-sized episode of The Professor Is In, Justin Wolfers uses a strange, wonderful case study — the collapse of artisanal bootmaking in 1850s England — to think through what AI will do to your work, your wages, and maybe even where you live. Economic historian Hillary Vipond found that even though a new technology let each worker produce four times as much, total bootmaking jobs barely budged. But two-thirds of the old occupations vanished and were replaced by new ones. The cordswainer disappeared; the factory foreman, machinist, and riveter arrived. In our moment, that's the translator seeing wages fall and the "prompt engineer" rising in their place.
The good news: a bigger pie usually means bigger servings for workers — China's incomes rose more than tenfold as it industrialized. The catch is pace. If AI really replaces half of white-collar work in five years, as some tech CEOs claim, that's a disruption bigger than COVID or the financial crisis. ustin's plain advice: become the most AI-savvy person in your workplace, keep your skills broad rather than narrow, and double down on the basics — because AI will not take your job, but someone using AI might.
Link to Hillary Vipond's original research: https://github.com/HillaryVipond/JMP/blob/main/Technological_Unemployment_in_Victorian_Britain_VipondH.pdf
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