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If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

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Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#11

Post by hinkley »

thunderbird120 wrote: post #8
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #6

Is there any evidence that whole-workforce productivity applies equally to minimum wage jobs? If not, the claim seems unsustainable. Completely anecdotally, improvements in labor productivity due to automation (etc) are less likely to be impactful in jobs like waiting tables, delivering newspapers or flipping hamburgers. That anecdotal evidence is backed by research that shows that service sector productivity tends t…

It absolutely does not. Productivity gains over the past 50 years have been disproportionately concentrated in higher skilled positions (who earn salaries, not wages). If you feel like reading a 66 page extremely dry analysis of the relationship between compensation and productivity then here you go. https://www.nber.org/papers/w24165.pdf

A good follow-on question might be, do we expect more from low-wage employees now than we did then?

When I was a teenager, food service proved to be a much more complicated job than I anticipated it to be. My first tech jobs paid better (even though an internship would have paid more), and felt simpler. If only because I'd spread out the effort of learning the skills over 8 years instead of 3 months.

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#13

Post by gowld »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #6

Is there any evidence that whole-workforce productivity applies equally to minimum wage jobs? If not, the claim seems unsustainable. Completely anecdotally, improvements in labor productivity due to automation (etc) are less likely to be impactful in jobs like waiting tables, delivering newspapers or flipping hamburgers. That anecdotal evidence is backed by research that shows that service sector productivity tends t…

The headline is a lie, which the article itself acknowledges and tries to rebut with handwaving about feedback effects.

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#15

Post by jankotek »

hinkley wrote: post #10

Smart-but-lazy employees are interested in efficiency, and will work uncharacteristically hard in order to achieve it. Bosses and owners are only interested if there's something in it for them. As in does it increase our output without a proportional increase in costs. The bigger the gap the more social capital I will burn on making that change (including, but not limited to, fucking over my loyal employees by replac…

> Smart-but-lazy employees are interested in efficiency, and will work uncharacteristically hard in order to achieve it.

So if their job could be replaced with simple script....

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#16

Post by orblivion »

comeonseriously wrote: post #5

How much would a cheeseburger and a shake cost?

This points to what I was going to say. The whole point of efficiency gains in a company is to pay less for your resources (in this case labor) for a given amount of output. Ideally what we would see, however, is a reduction in prices as a result that more than compensates for the reduction in pay. Thus, across the economy, the general theme would be more output for a given amount of work. I have no idea how that metric tracks, though, but the cheeseburger and shake I guess is one way of asking that question.

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#17

Post by falcolas »

hinkley wrote: post #11
thunderbird120 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely does not. Productivity gains over the past 50 years have been disproportionately concentrated in higher skilled positions (who earn salaries, not wages). If you feel like reading a 66 page extremely dry analysis of the relationship between compensation and productivity then here you go. https://www.nber.org/papers/w24165.pdf

A good follow-on question might be, do we expect more from low-wage employees now than we did then? When I was a teenager, food service proved to be a much more complicated job than I anticipated it to be. My first tech jobs paid better (even though an internship would have paid more), and felt simpler. If only because I'd spread out the effort of learning the skills over 8 years instead of 3 months.

> do we expect more from low-wage employees now than we did then?

Given an example of warehouse workers, and how companies are enacting more and more automated "anti-slacking" restrictions, yeah, I think we are.

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#18

Post by iso1631 »

jankotek wrote: post #15
hinkley wrote: post #10

Smart-but-lazy employees are interested in efficiency, and will work uncharacteristically hard in order to achieve it. Bosses and owners are only interested if there's something in it for them. As in does it increase our output without a proportional increase in costs. The bigger the gap the more social capital I will burn on making that change (including, but not limited to, fucking over my loyal employees by replac…

> Smart-but-lazy employees are interested in efficiency, and will work uncharacteristically hard in order to achieve it. So if their job could be replaced with simple script....

I have such a long list of things to do that I constantly try to replace them with a simple script.

Why would I want to do a job that can be scripted?

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#19

Post by pnw_hazor »

glitchc wrote: post #9
comeonseriously wrote: post #5

How much would a cheeseburger and a shake cost?

Labour is anywhere from 25% to 34% of the food cost. So, anywhere from 1/3 to 1/4. It's not the lion's share as envisioned. https://totalfood.com/busting-restaurant-labor-cost-myth/

There would be increased costs up the whole supply chain -- all passed up to restaurants.

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#20

Post by deegles »

ardy42 wrote: post #3
dcolkitt wrote: post #2

Average annual wages in the United States for was $63,000 for the most recent year available.[1] Average annual hours worked was 1,779 per year.[2] That implies an average wage of $35/hour. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w... [2] https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm

That doesn't contradict the actual article, whose full title is: > If Worker Pay Had Kept Pace With Productivity Gains Since 1968, Today's Minimum Wage Would Be $24 an Hour It looks like when it was shortened one of its most important words were dropped.

Sorry, I was trying to make it fit the character limit :(
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