In a previous post and economic snapshot, I and others noted the historical symmetry of the rise and fall of union density across the last century and its uncanny mirror image—the fall and rise of the share of income going to the top ten percent. The juxtaposition of the two lines suggests less a direct causal relationship than an emblematic one—between the trajectory of the workers’ bargaining power on the one hand, and trajectory of rent-padded top incomes on the other.

Updating this data through 2012 only confirms this dismal pattern. Union membership fell to 11.3 percent in 2012, and to a measly 6.6 percent in the private sector. As the last business cycle battered working Americans, the very rich just got richer—hoarding all of the income gains of the recovery, and reaching income shares unseen in the last century (19.3% for the top one percent, 35.8 percent for the top five percent, and 48.2 percent for the top ten percent).