That so many people aren’t making a living wage isn’t some new reality of the coronavirus. It reached this point over several decades, as wages failed to rise. One easy way to see this is the productivity-pay ratio . In theory, when the productivity of workers goes up — as in, they produce more per hour — their pay should go up too. Between 1979 and 2018, the productivity of U.S. workers went up by almost 70%. Wages, though? Just 11.6%. And it’s not a mystery why the math has shifted. In 1965, CEOs of publicly traded companies made about 20 times more than a typical full-time worker did . In 2014, they made about 304 times what a typical worker did. The highest 1% of wages ballooned by 138% between 1973 and 2013. For the bottom 90% of wages, there was just 15% growth during that time period.