Outside periods of recession, the public mood has rarely been as downbeat about the economy as it is today, with consumer confidence at a historic low and polls recording a deep pessimism about where things are headed. Against this backdrop, political and business leaders are touting an economic “golden age,” pointing to solid growth, stable unemployment, record profits, and a stock market that seems to only go up. The vibes on Main Street are gloomy, but on Wall Street they are nearly euphoric.

One way to understand this growing disconnect between everyday people and elites is to examine how today’s celebrated gains are distributed across the economy compared with earlier periods. To do that, economists typically look at the national income and how much of it goes to workers — the “labor share” — versus the portion that flows to capital in profits and rents. (Together labor and profits make up roughly two-thirds of gross domestic income; the remaining third is absorbed by rents, taxes, and a mix of other smaller categories.)

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tracks the labor share of the nonfarm business sector (the private economy minus agriculture) with quarterly data going back to 1947. For most of the twentieth century, that share was remarkably stable: it rose during recessions, as business income fell, and it declined as companies regained profitability, yet it never dropped below 60 percent and averaged around 63 percent. Labor’s consistent capture of about two-thirds of the national income was, in the words of John Maynard Keynes, “one of the most surprising, yet best-established, facts in the whole range of economic statistics.”