Modern Times

[FluffyMcDeath]

A half century ago America’s largest private-sector employer was General Motors, whose full-time workers earned an average hourly wage of around $50, in today’s dollars, including health and pension benefits.
Today, America’s largest employer is Wal-Mart, whose average employee earns $8.81 an hour. A third of Wal-Mart’s employees work less than 28 hours per week and don’t qualify for benefits.

That's progress.

 

[Glaucus]

I'd be curious to see how GM workers of today compare to GM workers a half century ago. Although comparing GM workers to Wal-mart still says something about how things have changed, the two work forces are quite different. And in fact, I wonder if even today's GM workers are as skilled as they were back in the 1960s. Robots do most of the work now, however back then, you really needed highly trained workers to get anything done. So could we compare them to today's tech workers? Probably. Well, I'd love to make $50 an hour!

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Although comparing GM workers to Wal-mart still says something about how things have changed, the two work forces are quite different.

Yes, but GM was the largest private sector employer in the 60s and now it's Walmart.