As reported by ssa.gov, from the years 2001 to 2018, the Average Wage Index (AWI) for workers increased 2.59% annually; whereas, in comparison to the S&P 500, that stock market index return over the same period of time was 4.43%, annually; signifying that the stock market return was a cumulative 71% higher than the AWI over that period of eighteen years. Since, it takes labor to produce products, goods, and services, one would think, all things being equal, that wage growth would be in sync with stock market returns, but clearly stock market returns have been appreciably higher than wage growth. This so indicates that those that control the means of production, and are the people in charge of the wages so provided to American workers, have siphoned a higher percentage of those profits onto their own executive and upper management hands as well as onto the stockholders of record, as opposed to sharing that wealth, fairly, with those that are an integral part of the process of creating those goods and services.
Not too surprisingly, in an era in which labor unions are weak, and governmental taxation policies favor the rich and elite, this means that those that are mere wage earners and without good (or any) labor representation whatsoever, are going to end up with the short end of the stick, more often than not, of which that lack of wage growth commensurate to the stock market returns so generated, reflects that laborers are not receiving their fair day's wage for a fair day's work. After all, wages that companies do not pay to their employees, are therefore monies kept for those that own the means of that production for their own benefit; so that, in essence, the rich, privileged, and most connected amongst us, get even more wealth, all at the expense of those that are falling further and further behind in wages earned.
So then we live within a construct, in which when times are bad, employees are fired or laid off or have their working hours reduced or are simply let go because they are often considered to be "at will" employees, and hence there is no monetary penalty so paid by the employer for these workers, whether they are laid off, terminated, have their hours reduced, or their wages stagnated. On the other hand, when times are good, employee wages do not rise at the same level that the profits and the stock market returns are generating, mainly because those that do the employing, are not compelled by law, or pressured by labor unions, or by governmental forces, for that matter, to pay more in compensation, then they are wont to do.
All of this is indicative as to why the rich get richer, the middle class remains under pressure, and the impoverished remain stuck in their place. This is also why there are those privileged few that continue to aggrandize more and more in assets, that thereby allows them to lord it over a significant portion of their fellow Americans, because their greed and unfairness knows no bounds; and this sheepish government does not thereby utilize its power to appropriately tax those privileged people or those corporations, and lacks the very courage to pass necessary robust labor legislature laws that would help to ameliorate this current wage situation, which steals from those that have not, to give more to those that have.