The most eye-catching economic anomaly of 2025: productivity is soaring, wages are falling.

According to data, in Q2-Q3, non-farm productivity grew at an annualized rate of 4.5-4.9% for two consecutive quarters, a level close to that of the internet bubble era. Sounds impressive, but a quick look reveals actual hourly wages declined by 0.2-2.2%—the most extreme dislocation since 1997, only surpassed during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Logically, increased productivity means more output per hour. Corporate profits are rising, so they should share some of the gains with employees, right? Otherwise, why would they get workers to accept new technologies? But reality slapped us in the face: corporate profit margins hit a historic high of 20%, while unit labor costs plummeted by 1.9%, and workers still received shrinking real wages. This 13 percentage point "savings" (a 9 percentage point drop in labor share + a 4 percentage point reduction in interest costs) almost entirely went into shareholders' pockets.

The loudest debates in the market are between two camps:

The optimistic side says that AI productivity dividends haven't fully transmitted to wages yet and need time, just like the "jobless recovery" of the early 1990s eventually led to prosperity. But the pessimists are not convinced—they see this as not prosperity but accelerated exploitation. AI enables companies to lay off 1.2 million workers in 2025 while maintaining output, crushing workers' bargaining power.

Looking back at historical data, the pessimists' argument is more solid: from 1995 to 2023, this kind of "decoupling" has already caused workers to lose 3-5% of their lifetime income. Is this time really different?