Workers’ share of the spoils of economic output has not recovered from a sharp drop seen after the Covid-19 pandemic, according to data that points to worsening economic inequalities as the rollout of generative AI gathers pace.  

Estimates by the International Labour Organization, published on Wednesday, show that the share of global gross domestic product earned by employees and the self-employed fell from 52.9 per cent in 2019 to 52.3 per cent in 2022 and had remained flat in the following two years.

The trend marks a sharp acceleration of a long-running decline. The ILO said labour’s share of global GDP had fallen 1.6 percentage points since it first began publishing data in 2004 — representing a loss of $2.4tn after adjusting for inflation — and that 40 per cent of the drop had taken place since 2019.