Notes: The profit shares are calculated as the share of gross operating surplus over gross operating surplus plus compensation of employees. Gross operating surplus is corrected for the self-employed. In the euro area, it has increased from an average level of 25% in the 1970s to 37% today, and it has increased by even more than in the United States over this period.
This rise has not been sudden. It has rather been a gradual and persistent increase that only came to a halt with the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008. Macroeconomic data are often only a very crude proxy of net entrepreneurial income. But microdata corroborate the view that aggregate profitability is likely to have increased structurally over time.