The hidden power keeping wages low : Planet Money : NPR

Monopsony is a cool word for an important idea, especially in labor markets: when employers face limited competition for workers, they gain power to pay them less and treat them worse than they otherwise could.  

While Robinson and other scholars believed monopsony power could be a significant force in the economy, for a long time mainstream economists treated monopsonies as a kind of unicorn — found only in rare circumstances, like small towns with a single dominant employer or companies that employ highly specialized kinds of workers who don't have other job options. 

But in a new book, The Wage Standard: What's Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It, the economist Arindrajit Dube offers a theory — drawing on a growing body of peer-reviewed research — that monopsony power is much more widespread throughout the economy than previously thought, even in markets that at first blush seem rather competitive. And that matters because monopsony power could be used to suppress wages…

 https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2026/04/21/g-s1-118071/the-hidden-power-keeping-wages-low