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

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

News, Business, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2026

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 Further reading: The Wage Standard: What’s Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It MBAs in management lead to lower employee pay, study finds Eclipse of Rent-Sharing: The Effects of Managers’ Business Education on Wages and the Labor Share in the US and Denmark Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders: Estimates Using Contiguous Counties NELP Research Brief on Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders: Estimates Using Contiguous Counties Minimum wage own-wage elasticity repository: a representative estimate of the own-wage elasticity (OWE) of employment from every minimum wage study published since 1992. Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Facebook: Pitchfork Economics Podcast Bluesky: @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Threads: pitchforkeconomics TikTok: @pitchfork_econ YouTube: @pitchforkeconomics LinkedIn: Pitchfork Economics Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer Substack: ⁠The Pitch⁠

Transcript

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0:00.0	The rising inequality and growing political instability that we see today are the direct result of decades of bad economic theory.
0:10.6	The last five decades of trickle-down economics haven't worked.
0:14.8	But what's the alternative?
0:16.3	Middle-out economics is the answer.
0:18.6	Because the middle class is the source of growth, not its consequence.
0:23.1	That's right.
0:28.7	This is pitchfork economics with Nick Hanauer, a podcast about how to build the economy from the middle out.
0:36.9	Welcome to the show.
0:44.8	Goldie, I am so fired up today because we get to talk to our old friend, Aaron DuBay.
0:51.2	What a geek you are.
0:52.5	You're all fired up to talk to a University of Chicago
0:56.1	trained economist. Oh, my God. No, but Aaron Dubei is my hero. Aaron Dubei is the godfather of the
1:05.6	empirical study of the minimum wage. Right. And has been such an important...
1:12.7	I just can't tell you how many other labor economists you've just offended.
1:17.2	Oh, quit out.
1:18.4	I'm sorry, everybody, but no, come on.
1:20.8	The guy has made such a big contribution to our understanding of the impact of the minimum
1:27.2	wage on jobs and has been at it for, you know, a really
1:31.1	long time. And Aaron is an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and he's got this
1:37.6	killer new book out called The Wage Standard, What's Wrong with the Labor Market and How to Fix
1:41.2	It? And we're just very fortunate to get to spend time with
1:45.0	Aaron and talk about all these issues. I know he'll have a very interesting perspective on it.
	...

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