Corporate profit margins just hit another all-time high. Companies are making more per dollar of sales than they ever have before. If you're a shareholder, that seems like good news (in the very short term, anyway). Alas, most people aren't shareholders. And for folks whose investment horizon is longer than "this quarter" and "this year," it's actually bad news. Companies are under-investing in their employees and the future.
Wages as a percent of the economy just hit another all-time low. One reason companies are making so much money is that they're paying employees less than they ever have as a share of GDP. That's bad news for everyone, by the way, not just employees. Low employee wages are one reason the economy is so weak: Those "wages" represent spending power for consumers. And consumer spending is "revenue" for other companies. So the short-term corporate profit obsession is actually starving the rest of the economy of revenue growth.
EMPLOYMENT TO POPULATION RATIO
Fewer Americans are working than at any time in the past three decades. The other reason corporations are so profitable is that they don't employ as many Americans as they used to. As a result, the employment-to-population ratio has collapsed. We're back at 1980s levels now.
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