Post-Labor Valuation: A Cost-Based Framework for Measuring Synthetic Margin Density in AI-Accelerated Enterprise Software Platforms

This paper introduces Post-Labor Valuation (PLV): a measurement framework for analyzing the margin structure of enterprise software platforms in which delivery growth no longer requires proportional headcount growth. PLV replaces headcount with the labor/compute decomposition of delivery cost as the unit of analysis, comprising a CES cost-minimization microfoundation, four observable indicators (SMD, SMD*, LSR, CCS), and four theoretical results connecting measurement to valuation. This is Paper 1 of the Post-Labor Valuation Working Paper Series.