Remeasuring labour's share

Krueger (1999) provides a measure of 'raw' labour's share for the US post-war economy based on Mincerian regressions. He finds that raw labour's share fell by over 8 percentage points from 1959 to 1996. We provide an alternative estimate using direct observations on the wage rates of raw labour units, i.e. those with 8 years of education or less; aged 16-18 years. Our measure of raw labour's share is considerably higher on average than Krueger's. Furthermore, our measure rises during the later part of the sample and is over 22% by 1996.