Since March 2018, 57% of corporate tax savings from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act have gone to shareholders through stock buybacks or dividends, while only 20% have gone towards job creation commitments, and 6% to employees as wages, bonuses, or benefits.

“Proponents of the new tax law promoted it to the American public as a job-creating and wage-boosting policy for American workers. Instead, public companies in the U.S. are spending increasing and unprecedented amounts of cash on repurchasing shares of their own stocks. Yet America’s workers have seen nowhere near such a boost: Companies have announced share buyback programs 30 times as valuable as those increasing employee compensation (Lazonick and Wartzman 2018), while investment in business operations is up just 3 percent following passage of the tax law (Mullaney 2018).”