But Corporate America has never been better, financially. Meanwhile workers, whose wages have largely been neglected in recent years, now enjoy a historically significant amount of bargaining power. That won’t always be the case.
“Workers are in the driver’s seat more than any time in recent decades,” says Aaron Sojourner, a labor economist and professor at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.
This surge in labor’s bargaining power won’t last forever, however. The pandemic “scrambled everything,” Sojourner says, “and now people are finding better opportunities at different places.”
‘The Great Finding a Better Job’
Americans have been quitting their jobs in record numbers. In November, a record 4.5 million, or 3% of the workforce, voluntarily left. And even though hiring slowed in December, the US economy is coming off a record-breaking year: 6.4 million jobs were added in 2021, the most since records started in…
