Including the profit your employer retains -- employers necessarily pay you less than the value of your labor.
Untrue. Employers aim for that but they often fail.
The Credit Suisse employees that lost $5 billion due to Archegos were overpaid.
Alternatively if I am the only person that can do a particular necessary job for a business, I should be able to reap the majority of the profits due to my monopoly.
Finally, for some professional jobs productivity is hard to measure, yet you may employ many people because in aggregate they make a profit. At an individual level, the profit margin can vary from negative to positive.
> The Credit Suisse employees that lost $5 billion due to Archegos were overpaid.
Edge cases. Most people work for businesses that make a profit, and those businesses' profit comes from the difference between the value its employees create and the salary it pays to them (at least in aggregate).
> Finally, for some professional jobs productivity is hard to measure, yet you may employ many people because in aggregate they make a profit. At an individual level, the profit margin can vary from negative to positive.
You're confusing what is meant by the "value of your labor". Of course what GP meant is "the value of your labor as seen by your employer". If everyone could create the same value they create in an organized business while working solo then nobody would work a job as it would just be losing money.
That’s not true “necessarily” unless you assume all employers are sustainable, in idealized competitive markets, and that all of their inputs are also purchased in idealized competitive markets such that they don’t have monopsony savings they can spend on surplus wages without impacting sustainability.
Obviously, even with idealized market assumptions, one reason an firms fail is paying more total for inputs than the value they produce, and lots of firms fail.
And I dodged entirely around worker coops and other arrangements where the excess value is distributed back to employees.
But there are many other kinds of assets - cash, brand, real estate, natural renewable resources etc.
One could have a zero labour company that is profitable.