A lot of what we are seeing in this productivity gap is just that rising productivity is not translating into more profits because the extra gain in productivity is being eaten by increases in the cost of buying raw materials. Here are some increases in price for a bunch of basic commodities over the last decade (approximately)
Iron ore: 12 -> 170 cents per ton
Crude oil 40 -> 200 (index number)
Lead 400 -> 2400 dollars per ton
Tin 3500 -> 26000 dollars per ton
Now that is not to say that every commodity has increased. Some have bucked the trend, its easy to get data just google commodities prices. Overall the index for industrial commodities has risen by a factor of 4 in ten years. To put this in perspective, 30 years ago at was at pretty much exactly the same value as ten years ago. No matter how you look at it, if the economy is paying more for goods, then people are worse off. This is the story of the wage/productivity gap for the last decade.
(Prior to a decade ago it was entirely explained by the fact that consumer purchases (wages) used the consumer price index, and companies used the retail price index to adjust for inflation. If you adjusted them both by the same inflation index there was no productivity gap.
