The Growing Wealth Divide: How Corporations Thrive While Workers Struggle – OpEd

The economy of today is characterized by the increasing gap between the rich corporations and the poor workers,  which leads to the worsening of social and economic inequalities. These are labor markets that have been invented and created by large corporations, especially the tech companies, and have centralized power and wealth for a few while denying many workers a chance to work.

Digital capitalism has only made these inequalities worse through the use of digital technologies to create new forms of employment and erode labor rights. With the increase in corporate influence, policy measures being implemented fail to address the root cause of wealth inequality and, hence, put the burden of navigating through the unfair financial system on the workers. This paper aims to discuss how the gap between corporations’ success and people’s financial well-being is growing and why more rigorous government regulation is needed.

Corporate earnings have gotten to the highest levels ever, and workers’ earnings have lagged. In 2025, CEO-to-worker pay ratios in major corporations exceeded  400:1, which shows that the level of income inequality is very high. While companies like Amazon and Google are making record revenues, the average wage growth has not even kept up with the rate of inflation. The minimum wage in many developed countries remains inadequate to the increasing costs of living, and the situation is only worsening for the low and middle-income earners.

Moreover, due to the existing corporate tax evasion practices, many multinational corporations pay low effective tax rates compared to small businesses and individual people, which only widens the gap between the rich and the poor. These policies also reflect the government’s focus on corporate allurements, neglecting the worker’s rights, thus making it almost impossible for the normal employee to climb the ladder.

Digital capitalism has further increased economic inequalities through the transformation of work and labour relations. Gig economy platforms like Uber, DoorDash, and TaskRabbit claim to offer flexible work opportunities but essentially harness workers. These platforms hire their workers as contractors, not as employees, which excludes them from minimum wage,  health insurance, and job security. This change has increased job insecurity and has resulted in workers having no set income and no workplace rights. In 2025, automation and artificial intelligence are on the rise, and traditional jobs in retail, customer service, and transportation are under threat of being replaced. The power of the tech giants controls these universities, and this leads to the power of setting employment terms and conditions and, in the process, denies labor rights to the workers, resulting in financial uncertainty.

Economic policies are very often ineffective and counter-productive in the sense that they fail to tackle the root causes of the oppression, which means that more people are left to suffer in financial hardship. While the arguments for corporate tax cuts and deregulation are that they help grow the economy, the benefits do not necessarily accrue to workers. However, the corporations use the profits to buy back stocks and pay executives’ bonuses rather than raise wages or create jobs. At the same time, the prices for essential goods and services, including housing, healthcare, and education, are on the rise, and wage growth cannot keep up with inflation.

In 2025, the costs of housing in major urban areas have hit new highs, rendering young people and low-income families homeless. Student loan debt is also a severe handicap on the financial stability of the generation that has to pay for it, while the jobs that they get do not pay enough to cover the costs of the education that they have received. Individual financial literacy is usually advocated as the solution, but this is impossible to do so within the context of structural economic conditions that create and sustain inequality.

This increasing inequality is also sustained by financial institutions in the form of banks and investment firms. Banks and investment firms are giving preferences to large corporations to offer them better lending terms and access to capital markets while other small businesses and individual borrowers are charged with higher interest rates and close monitoring. This preference only enlarges the economic power, which makes it almost impossible for the smaller players to even come close. Furthermore, venture capital firms are still putting their money into tech startups with bad employment practices, thus further entrenching a model where worker rights are sacrificed in the name of profitability.  Shareholder value has been the name of the game in financializing the economy, meaning that businesses care more about cutting costs — including paying their workers fairly.

The gap between corporate earnings and the financial well-being of workers needs policy changes. To this end, governments should establish better labor laws, raise the minimum wage, offer benefits to gig workers and tighten laws on employment by companies. Antitrust policies should also be implemented to prevent any firm from having too much control of the market and to defend labor from being exploited by the tech giants. These measures can be complemented by progressive tax policies that would force corporations and high-income people to pay their fair share into supporting social programs and public infrastructure. Another policy that can be considered is the basic income proposal because automation is likely to obliterate many of the jobs we have seen up to this moment. Moreover, there is the need to enforce stricter measures on corporate influence through lobbying and political contributions to reduce their influence in policy making and ensure economic policies benefit the many and not the few.

The result of the unchecked growth of the corporation, as well as the challenges of the digital economy, is increased economic inequality. Corporations have been gaining wealth from tax loopholes, unfair treatment of workers, and monopoly power. The inability of economic policies to tackle these systemic issues worsens inequality, meaning that many people are struggling to make ends meet. As the world economy moves further into 2025, regulatory reform and labour protection are needed more than ever.  If nothing changes, the economic gap will keep on expanding, which will eventually lead to social injustice and affect the society’s stability and the future. If these inequalities are left unaddressed, they may lead to social enmity, political radicalization, and economic cycles, which makes it important for governments and policymakers to act quickly to check corporate hegira and to look after the workers.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own.

                                                         Reference

• Zuboff, Shoshana. The Digital Economy and Labor: The New Age of Corporate Power. Oxford University Press, 2023.
• Stiglitz, Joseph E. Inequality, Work, and the Future of Capitalism. W.W. Norton & Company, 2023.
• Srnicek, Nick. Platform Capitalism and the Gig Economy: The Struggle for Workers’ Rights. Polity Press, 2023.