Aren't many finance jobs for companies that might have a near monopoly in their industry? What type of medical? It certainly exists in food with huge companies like Mcdonalds. Bars? Is that a big employer?What service jobs aren't tied to some industry?There are few industries I can think of that don't have some form of this. The use of noncompete agreements is all over.Good question. I would say you want to first start by following the money. The wealth is here, we have plenty of jobs, where is the money going? I think we know the answer to that. So then why are markets so broken? Here is a good article I mostly agree with you should read.
Wage stagnation: economists look to new explanations | Harvard Magazine
Economists look to new explanations for wage stagnation.harvardmagazine.com
MARKET CONCENTRATION, the economist’s term for how much an industry is dominated by one or a few firms, touches ever more aspects of American life. From the obvious (the Amazons and Walmarts of the retail economy) to the obscure (the beer industry, which may appear diverse, is dominated by two firms), market concentration has increased in three-quarters of U.S. industries during the twenty-first century. This has had wide-ranging effects not only on consumers, but also, economists increasingly believe, on labor. “Fewer firms in a given industry makes it easier for them to have more bargaining power [over employees], and harder for workers to switch to another employer,” says Jason Furman, professor of the practice of economic policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and former chair of the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Today’s labor markets increasingly look like a monopsony: a market in which there is only one buyer—the inverse of a monopoly, in which there is only one seller. The more an industry is dominated by a small number of corporations, the more those companies can control the cost of labor. Traditionally, Furman says, economists have relied on a supply-and-demand story about the labor market: “There’s a supply of workers and demand for workers, and the wage is what clears the market, just like the price of wheat is what clears the market for wheat. That explains a lot about wages, but it probably doesn’t explain everything…[T]hat research program went as far as it could.”
In the last three years, Furman explains, economists have looked to monopsony and other factors beyond market competition to explain the stagnation of Americans’ wages during the last few decades. Fewer companies in a given industry make it easier for those companies to coordinate, either indirectly or through overt collusion, to keep wages low. Think of a town with two big-box retail stores: each store knows what the other pays its cashiers, and neither wants to raise wages. Firms can also use noncompete agreements, which ban employees from taking jobs at rival companies, to prevent workers from finding new jobs elsewhere. About 24.5 percent of the American work force has signed a noncompete, according to one Brookings Institution analysis, and this number is not much lower (about 21 percent) for workers earning less than the median salary.
But wages stagnation is across the board, not limited to "given industries".
Why are you limiting the discussion to industries? Nothing prevents labor from moving from industry to service jobs.
Financial, Medical, Food, Bars, off the top of my head.
1. Not that I have seen.
2. All types of medical. I've seen a steel worker retrain as radiation therapist.
3. Bars are huge employers. And owning a bar can be quite lucrative. I have seen a retired steel worker become a millionaire opening a bar.
