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If you are still working in a minimum wage job and you're past your mid 20's, you haven't done anything to make yourself more valuable to your employer. Most who made the minimum wage five years ago have moved up. That's the way it works. I made minimum wage when I was in high school and college. But, like most people, I moved up the wage scale ladder. Because I made myself more valuable to my employer through education and taking on additional duties. That's what most people do. If you think $15 should be the base minimum wage, guess what. When that happens prices will go up, offsetting any gain, and automation will cause even more people to lose their jobs or never even get the chance to be employed. When I was at SeaTac last month I ordered my meal via a kiosk. The next time I pass through there a robot will be flipping the burgers.
The world is full of people who will never be more than minimum wage workers. Anybody who graduates from high school with a C average or lower, or who doesn't graduate at all, will never amount to much.
Kodak is a very small and almost insignificant company today, compared to their past. Reason: They made film for cameras from Brownies (very cheap cameras) to motion picture film. Today no one needs film any more. Movie film for the movie companies required a lot of film, and a lot of processing. The last movie made with film, was made last year.
For consumer market, instead of a roll of film that can make 8 pictures, today they can make hundreds of pictures on a little computer chip, and electronically send it to a printer, and print it out. Old way, was record on film, which had to be processed and then printed then that was processed.
As to janitors jobs being contracted today, an awful lot of them were contracted out back 60 years ago, just as they are today.
There has always been inequality of pay at companies. The pay has been set according to the difficulty of staffing for the job. If the job required an extensive education, and few applicants available to be interviewed and selected, it paid high pay. If you ran an add for a job requiring little if any skill, and 1,000 people applied for the job, it did not pay very high. Companies paid what it took, to get the job done, and the higher paid people, had to produce more value to the company than the lower paid ones.
Lets go back 60 years, when I was selling furniture in stores. I worked in a major (one of top 10 in country) department store with 4 stores. I sold furniture. Furniture, major (big) appliances, carpet, and electronics were commission jobs. We were paid 6% of the amount of sales. The rest of the clerks, warehouse workers, etc.,, were paid 85 Cents an hour, or $34 per week. In today's dollars the commission people earned from $125,000 to $150,000 in today's dollars, while the rest earned about equal to today's minimum wages. My biggest sales averaging 2 hours total time, paid me more on that one sale, than the other department employees made in a year. Those 10 people on commission, made more than the division heads, and the assistant store manager. Those 10 commission salespeople, made the store nearly half of the net income for the store, with hundreds of employees in the other departments.
As you can see, there has always been income inequality. People have always been paid, for the value they produced for the company. An engineer that develops a new product that can produce millions of dollars (and sometimes billions) for the company adds value to the company. A janitor that keeps the building clean, does exactly that and is an expense not a value adder.
The bottom line is, the persons salary with a company, depends on if they are a value adder, or just an expense. It depends on how much education, how big a supply of applicants, how much training it requires. Some jobs may take months to get a new employee trained and up to speed where they are able to do the job without supervision, and some jobs can take a couple of hours at the most to train them.
Reason that many companies do not train the people hired for jobs requiring a long period to train and bring up to speed. The difference is the company loyalty of the past, and the job hopping attitude of young workers today. In the past you could train a worker for months until they were up to full speed, and they stayed with the company for their entire career.
Today the young workers, feel they will work till they are trained and jump ship, and find someone willing to pay them a little more, and many never plan on staying more than 2 years on a job, always looking to jump to a higher paid job. Companies cannot afford to pay the money training costs, and not get a return on their investment as training a long term permanent employee would bring them.
Interesting how you kept strictly to wages back in the good old days but left all the cost of living out. Yeah my grandfather knew guys who sold appliances at Sears robuck and that was their only gig, and they had a nice house, new car, retirement. The dude selling appliances at Lowe's can't even afford the bare minimum insurance coverage for his 2004 Toyota beater, let alone think about a home.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mph101
Interesting how you kept strictly to wages back in the good old days but left all the cost of living out. Yeah my grandfather knew guys who sold appliances at Sears robuck and that was their only gig, and they had a nice house, new car, retirement. The dude selling appliances at Lowe's can't even afford the bare minimum insurance coverage for his 2004 Toyota beater, let alone think about a home.
Yes, and the reason is that in the days of your grandfather working at Sears there were very few computer programmers, and they were making just 12-20k. At that time retail sales paid $9-12k, slightly overlapping, but with tech jobs reaching just under double at the top. Now, the technology industry accounts for far more of the jobs, and pays an average of $104,000, many far more because of the competition for the best. That's more than 10 times minimum wage typically paid in retail. All of those people making that much are competing for housing in many areas (Seattle, SF) and of course that drives up rent and home prices. Our first house in 1978 (SF Bay Area) cost $50,000, now valued at just under $700k.
The world is full of people who will never be more than minimum wage workers. Anybody who graduates from high school with a C average or lower, or who doesn't graduate at all, will never amount to much.
The quote above is really stupid!
I graduated from high with a 2.0 GPA, spent 5 years partying and doing nothing. Got a job washing dishes making $16.00 an hour (thank you old school union hotels!) and put myself through college starting at age 24. Graduated and started a salary position at a Fortune 100 at 27.
Anytime you blankly group masses of people you are destined to look limited.
I know plenty of 30 years old high school drop outs who got into union sprinkler fitter and pipe fitter jobs where they are making $35.00 an hour while completing a 3 to 5 year apprenticeship, with a pension vesting immediately.
One of the many problems is that jobs like the ones mentioned above did not grow with the population, instead they have declined and are being replaced with Walmart and fast food jobs that have to be subsidized by state and federal benefits.
Really the point the article touched on is that social/career mobility within a major firm was easier a generation ago because of the culture/structure of the work environment. The author made effort to not lay blame and just present the same position at a major company separated by a generation. The company is irrelevant, the point was the secretary from a generation ago used her position to network and obtain work financed training and was then given a shot to work in the corporate arm of the company.
How many companies today would give an entry-level corporate job to a former janitor of theirs? I honestly don't know but it's not a story you hear often. Do you think the woman who started as a janitor a generation ago was a straight A student in high school?
Last edited by BostonAccountant; 10-03-2017 at 09:39 PM..
we have a global economy now but people want to cherry pick a great time of prosperity (for white males) and act as though that would be the norm.
a lot of that higher pay was possible bc it was a different world and a lot of it was possible bc of a kick the can down the road mentality involved in pensions and other future benefits.
some things are better now than they were 40 or 50 years ago and some are worse.
Kodak is a very small and almost insignificant company today, compared to their past. Reason: They made film for cameras from Brownies (very cheap cameras) to motion picture film. Today no one needs film any more. Movie film for the movie companies required a lot of film, and a lot of processing. The last movie made with film, was made last year.
For consumer market, instead of a roll of film that can make 8 pictures, today they can make hundreds of pictures on a little computer chip, and electronically send it to a printer, and print it out. Old way, was record on film, which had to be processed and then printed then that was processed.
As to janitors jobs being contracted today, an awful lot of them were contracted out back 60 years ago, just as they are today.
There has always been inequality of pay at companies. The pay has been set according to the difficulty of staffing for the job. If the job required an extensive education, and few applicants available to be interviewed and selected, it paid high pay. If you ran an add for a job requiring little if any skill, and 1,000 people applied for the job, it did not pay very high. Companies paid what it took, to get the job done, and the higher paid people, had to produce more value to the company than the lower paid ones.
Lets go back 60 years, when I was selling furniture in stores. I worked in a major (one of top 10 in country) department store with 4 stores. I sold furniture. Furniture, major (big) appliances, carpet, and electronics were commission jobs. We were paid 6% of the amount of sales. The rest of the clerks, warehouse workers, etc.,, were paid 85 Cents an hour, or $34 per week. In today's dollars the commission people earned from $125,000 to $150,000 in today's dollars, while the rest earned about equal to today's minimum wages. My biggest sales averaging 2 hours total time, paid me more on that one sale, than the other department employees made in a year. Those 10 people on commission, made more than the division heads, and the assistant store manager. Those 10 commission salespeople, made the store nearly half of the net income for the store, with hundreds of employees in the other departments.
As you can see, there has always been income inequality. People have always been paid, for the value they produced for the company. An engineer that develops a new product that can produce millions of dollars (and sometimes billions) for the company adds value to the company. A janitor that keeps the building clean, does exactly that and is an expense not a value adder.
The bottom line is, the persons salary with a company, depends on if they are a value adder, or just an expense. It depends on how much education, how big a supply of applicants, how much training it requires. Some jobs may take months to get a new employee trained and up to speed where they are able to do the job without supervision, and some jobs can take a couple of hours at the most to train them.
Reason that many companies do not train the people hired for jobs requiring a long period to train and bring up to speed. The difference is the company loyalty of the past, and the job hopping attitude of young workers today. In the past you could train a worker for months until they were up to full speed, and they stayed with the company for their entire career.
Today the young workers, feel they will work till they are trained and jump ship, and find someone willing to pay them a little more, and many never plan on staying more than 2 years on a job, always looking to jump to a higher paid job. Companies cannot afford to pay the money training costs, and not get a return on their investment as training a long term permanent employee would bring them.
kodak also developed the digital camera, then did nothing with it. adapt or die.
I graduated from high with a 2.0 GPA, spent 5 years partying and doing nothing. Got a job washing dishes making $16.00 an hour (thank you old school union hotels!) and put myself through college starting at age 24. Graduated and started a salary position at a Fortune 100 at 27.
Anytime you blankly group masses of people you are destined to look limited.
I know plenty of 30 years old high school drop outs who got into union sprinkler fitter and pipe fitter jobs where they are making $35.00 an hour while completing a 3 to 5 year apprenticeship, with a pension vesting immediately.
One of the many problems is that jobs like the ones mentioned above did not grow with the population, instead they have declined and are being replaced with Walmart and fast food jobs that have to be subsidized by state and federal benefits.
Really the point the article touched on is that social/career mobility within a major firm was easier a generation ago because of the culture/structure of the work environment. The author made effort to not lay blame and just present the same position at a major company separated by a generation. The company is irrelevant, the point was the secretary from a generation ago used her position to network and obtain work financed training and was then given a shot to work in the corporate arm of the company.
How many companies today would give an entry-level corporate job to a former janitor of theirs? I honestly don't know but it's not a story you hear often. Do you think the woman who started as a janitor a generation ago was a straight A student in high school?
Key words are you learned a trade. this country needs more trade schools. instead we tell everyone to go to college, even those not academically inclined. then we make loans super easy for naive 18 year olds to get, driving up the price of college tuition while devaluing a degree. then we tell them it's ok to spend 100k majoring in nonsense learning next to nothing useful and partying for 4 years. then they graduate with some nonsense degree, thinking it's some amazing accomplishment even though undergrad is a complete joke for anyone with half a brain and act like they're owed something even though they have zero worthwhile skills.
now college can be worth a lot for someone smart and motivated who learns marketable skills. but that doesn't mean it's worth it for everyone.a moron with a degree is still a moron. a lazy person with a degree is still lazy. someone who can't think logically and critically with a degree is still someone who can't think logically or critically.
Key words are you learned a trade. this country needs more trade schools. instead we tell everyone to go to college, even those not academically inclined. then we make loans super easy for naive 18 year olds to get, driving up the price of college tuition while devaluing a degree. then we tell them it's ok to spend 100k majoring in nonsense learning next to nothing useful and partying for 4 years. then they graduate with some nonsense degree, thinking it's some amazing accomplishment even though undergrad is a complete joke for anyone with half a brain and act like they're owed something even though they have zero worthwhile skills.
now college can be worth a lot for someone smart and motivated who learns marketable skills. but that doesn't mean it's worth it for everyone.a moron with a degree is still a moron. a lazy person with a degree is still lazy. someone who can't think logically and critically with a degree is still someone who can't think logically or critically.
If someone isn't "college material", then I doubt they will make it in a skilled trade either. Looking at the trade program catalog for my local community college, you have to take many of the same courses including a good amount of math like trig and algebra.
In a world where one in three working age adults has a four-year college degree, you are not helping yourself by not having one. Per 2016 data from the Census Bureau, average earnings for those 25 and older whose highest education was a high school degree were $35,615. The average for those with a bachelor’s degree was $65,482; and for those with an advanced degree, it was $92,525.
That said, it isn't "everyone" who is encouraged to go to college. On an individual basis, there are many ways to do well and be happy that do not depend on college. The numbers are still the numbers though.
I tried to rep you on this post, but C-D told me to spread the love around more.
This is so true. People want to leave high school, "get a high-paying job", and then check out on any self-improvement. "I'll just drink beer and ride my Harley on weekends."
.
What's wrong with that? A job is just something to pay the bills with.
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