"the market" isn't gravity or physics- it's human beings making a decision- the value of one's labor is not decided by "the market" it's decided by people... and often those people choose to pay as little as possible regardless of what the productive output by the worker.
Witness slavery- slaves put out a lot of productivity but were paid zero (other than room and board)
Look at the rise in wages recently- clearly those businesses increasing pay now (due to ostensible labor shortage) could have paid more prior to the pandemic- but they chose NOT to despite the fact that the job and presumed productive output has not changed. Working the counter at McDonalds is no different now than 2 years ago.
Flat wages by corporations merely inflated the wealth of stockholders even though productivity went up!
"policy choices made to suppress wage growth prevented potential pay growth fueled by rising productivity from translating into actual pay growth for most workers. The result of this policy shift was the sharp divergence between productivity and typical workers’ pay shown in the graph. "
