It isn’t that he’s wrong, it’s just that I expect better from an economist. More clarity, not the blurring of the facts that he does here:

Above all, the weak job market leaves workers with no bargaining power,
so they aren’t getting ahead: wage increases have been minimal, and
haven’t kept up with inflation.

True, wages have not kept up with inflation.

What’s driving inflation? Not wages: labor costs have been falling,
because wages are growing less than productivity. Oil prices are a big
part of the story, but not all of it. Other commodity prices are also
rising; health care costs are once again on the march.

Also true, that wages are growing less than productivity. Not quite sure if labour costs have been falling, for there is that other little bit, that health care costs have been rising. For when you add the rises in wages and the rises in employment costs, total compensation has been rising faster than inflation. As I say, nothing actively wrong with what he’s saying, just a misleading impression given at the end of it.

To take the example a little further. Imagine that the friends at the EPI get to bring in some of their ideas. Shorter working hours, more maternity and paternity leave and so on. Using Krugman’s above argument, this would mean wages again falling behind inflation. For of course such things would cost businesses money (we can argue about whether they are worth it another time) and raise the level of total compensation. But as that extra cost is being taken in the form of leisure it would not raise wages. Ergo, we could criticize such policies for the fact that they cause wages to rise less quickly than productivity.

As it happens I don’t think I would use that criticism. But by pointing out that it could be used on a policy the Professor supports, or at least his ideological friends support, perhaps I’ve shown that it’s not all that useful a criticism?