Surprised?

Workers lose traction over past 10 years
Despite strong productivity growth, wages don't keep pace and fewer workers receive health and pension coverage.
By Jeanne Sahadi, CNNMoney.com senior writer
September 2 2006: 8:56 AM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Working for The Man may never have been an overpaid joy, but it has offered a decent way to make a living.
Yet it's become less decent, especially considering how strong productivity growth has been, according to findings from the 2006 edition of The State of Working America from the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal nonprofit research group.
Between 1995 and 2005, productivity -- a measure of the quantity and quality of what workers produce per hour -- grew 33.4 percent. But hourly wages rose only 11 percent, with almost all of that increase coming during the late 1990s, according to EPI.
Looking back even farther, the disparity is greater. Since 1979, productivity rose 67 percent, while wages rose only 8.9 percent.

So, if productivity, which is supposed to be a quantifiable measure of the value of work, is up one third but wages are only up about one tenth, where's the value of all that extra work going?

Hmmm.

This is a tough one.

Who could possibly have an answer?