What do you find shocking about it? There is a big moral question about corporate profits vs. wages. But given that some portion of revenues become profits, they are either going to turn into a corporate cash hoard, dividends, or buybacks. I don't see anything shocking about choosing a buyback over the other two choices. After all, when a company takes investor money in a public offering, the idea is that the money will eventually be returned to investors, plus a profit if possible. A buyback is one way to close out the deal with some of those investors and return that money.

Edit:

Also, I think there's a bit of funny math here possibly contributing to a misunderstanding when the article says things like this:

> During that period those companies used 54% of their earnings—a total of $2.4 trillion—to buy back their own stock, almost all through purchases on the open market. Dividends absorbed an additional 37% of their earnings. That left very little for investments in productive capabilities or higher incomes for employees.

By definition, wages don't come out of profits. A company could increase wages by $1 billion, have $1 million profit, do a $1 million buyback, and then a journalist could write an article saying "company spends 100% of profit on buyback, giving none of it to workers."

In reality, many companies have a large cash hoard which is not going to employees or investors. Doing a buyback in those circumstances (notable recent examples include Apple and Facebook) doesn't have any effect on employee wages.