Listen: Why are job and wage growth so slow?

In a statement released within the first month of his presidency, Donald Trump said he was prioritizing "getting Americans back to work." But the U.S. May jobs report showed a mixed bag with 50,000 fewer jobs added to the economy than expected. And wages continue to stagnate.

So what is it actually like to work in the U.S. right now? And why are wages growing so slowly?

"That is a mystery," Michigan State University professor Lisa Cook told MPR News host Kerri Miller. "

And there are several theories as to what's going on.

"One of them is that the economy has fundamentally changed — that we don't see inflation where we typically see inflation," she said, which typically drives up wages.

"Another theory is that supply chains — for instance, Amazon sort of organizing our entire economy, being the backbone of our entire economy — has depressed prices and one of those prices would be wages."

American Action Forum's Gordon Gray said he thought low wages were the result of a slow recovery from the recession.

"There are a lot of different dynamics going on in the labor market. And we're certainly coming out of a uniquely deep and uniquely damaging recession ... we haven't had a booming recovery."

Another theory is that companies are just not allowing money to trickle down to their employees.

"Often employers say there are not enough people to work," Cook said, "The question is whether they are willing to pay workers a certain wage.

"They got very accustomed during the recession to paying workers less because they were sure that they wouldn't leave for another job. Now we have a lot of job switching ... but there may be something else that would be keeping prices low and it may be this thought that you don't have to pay workers that much money."

In many places, legislators are considering raising the minimum wage to force wage increases.

But Gray said that move may have unintended effects.

"You don't always see necessarily when the minimum wage gets increased, that folks just lay off more expensive workers," Gray said. "Rather what they do is they defer raises to folks. They accommodate the higher labor costs ... by deferring wage growth. Or they just defer hiring."

Another discouraging number in the May jobs report is the labor participation rate. It's hovering at about 63 percent, which means there are a lot of people who have given up on looking for a job.

"Some of that reflects broader good trends in the labor force as women have increased their share in the labor force," Gray explained. "But there's some other more disturbing elements to this trend. There's been some work on disability insurance, but also addiction and mortality rates.

"Fundamentally, part of the labor force participation rate decline is the aging of the U.S. population ... the legacy of the baby boom."

Lisa Cook pointed out that another reason people have stopped looking for work may be cultural.

"Another thing that economists have found is that many men will not take the jobs where they are," Cook said. "A lot of these are called pink collar jobs and they're more associated with women like nursing ... the labor force participation rate has been falling since 2000. It's not just this recession — it's a longer-term trend."

Use the audio player above to hear the full segment.