Here’s Lawrence Mishel’s chart of American economic productivity versus hourly compensation for workers:

The above chart shows compensation for nonsupervisory workers, which Mishel says represents more than 80% of American payroll employment.

In short, as economic productivity rose after 1948, compensation for that 80% of American workers grew in tandem. But since 1973, productivity has continued to rise while compensation has stayed flattish.

What’s really going on here? I think it might be clearer if this were presented as a pie chart: