Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

The Wage Standard: What’s Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It (with Arin Dube)

2026-04-07

Corporate profits are booming. So why haven’t most workers gotten a raise? For decades, we’ve been told a simple story: work harder, become more productive, and your wages will follow. But what if that story was never really true? This week, Nick and Goldy talk to Arindrajit Dube—one of the most influential economists shaping how we understand wages, and author of a new book, The Wage Standard: What’s Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It —for a conversation that cuts to the heart of how pay actually works in America.

Corporate profits are booming. So why haven’t most workers gotten a raise?

For decades, we’ve been told a simple story: work harder, become more productive, and your wages will follow. But what if that story was never really true?

This week, Nick and Goldy talk to Arindrajit Dube—one of the most influential economists shaping how we understand wages, and author of a new book, The Wage Standard: What’s Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It —for a conversation that cuts to the heart of how pay actually works in America.

At a moment when the gap between what the economy produces and what workers take home keeps growing, this episode challenges some of the most fundamental assumptions in economics—and asks what it would take to build a labor market that actually delivers for working people.

Because if wages aren’t just set by “the market”… then they can be changed.

Arin Dube is an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and one of the leading researchers on wages and labor markets. He is the author of The Wage Standard: What’s Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It, and has advised policymakers in the U.S. and internationally on minimum wage policy and labor market dynamics.

Social Media:

@arindube.bsky.social

@arindube