No, they don't, this is a common misunderstanding. Including all 401ks, IRAs, directly-held stock, mutual funds, etc., the bottom 80% of Americans own less than 4% of all equities. The bottom 60% own 0.1% of all equities.[1]
[1]: https://medium.com/@MattBruenig/who-gains-from-dow-20-000-ba...
First, your stat ignores pension plans. Second, the bottom 60% might only own 0.1% of all equities, but that might be 50% of their savings/pension plan. I'd call that "skin in the game".
That one worker? If stock prices go up he will end up perhaps 1 more month's worth of retirement savings. Meanwhile his wages are being held down and the value he creates with his labor is being spent on stock buybacks and executive pay, the benefits of which go overwhelmingly to the other 999 people.
And yes, the stat includes pension plans.
So sure, the one guy has skin in the game. His wages have been held down, and in exchange he gets a fistful of coupons that entitle him to a few bucks for every million given to capital owners.
Wide scale elimination of pensions started in the 2000’s. Millions of people still have pensions in the US.
Of course the factory workers $30,000 in the market is going to be miniscule compared to the billionaire, but doesn't means it's not critical to the factory worker.
The fact that a tiny portion of workers also own some stocks doesn't change that fact.
And the fact that $30k in a retirement account is critical to a factory worker, doesn't help your case much. That pittance will have been saved out of already-stagnant wages that have been kept down by corporate management in favor of executive pay and stock buybacks, and will be nearly worthless for retirement purposes no matter what the stock market does. All you've done is reiterate the all-too-common disaster scenario for the working class that comes from favoring shareholders over workers.
The workers' real skin in the game is their labor and the value they produce from it, which is increasingly being kept back from them. They can have everything to gain and nothing to lose by gaining mandatory representation on the board.
It's everything to the factory worker, but it's a rounding error to anybody involved in making decisions that effect that factory worker's everything.
Using that definition of "skin in the game," I'm not sure what the point of the phrase is.