UPS driver pay and benefits deal in US to be worth $170k a year, firm says

yes, but whether I've done substantial amounts of manual labor in past lives isn't really that relevant. Of course, you might be sitting in your chair and think "that looks really difficult", and that'd be a fair observation for someone who hasn't worked in the trades.

> It's the definition of difficult.

Difficult like "hard work", or difficult like "curing cancer"?

Loading/unloading a truck is definitely not "the definition of difficult". a lot of other professions that make a lot less than $170k a year would disagree. By the way, you might know that UPS has loaders and pre-loaders; they're not drivers, and they're not unionized (AFAIK). It'd be a lot more fun and less work to drive a truck than to do that, but I'd definitely argue that loading garbage cans in residential neighborhoods is far more difficult than being a UPS driver.

> Do you have things shipped to your house? I think most people would consider that essential in 2023.

Yes, of course, but I still wouldn't consider a UPS delivery essential, especially when there are so many other delivery services. Is Uber Eats essential? It might be the only thing keeping me alive, but it's still not essential in my view. Even the USPS isn't really essential.

For some people who have oxygen equipment or COPD or something, electricity might be keeping them alive. Those are truly essential.

Here's a thought experiment: if UPS was still available but cost ten times as much, would you still pay it? If not, then it's probably not essential. Those paying for electricity for life support equipment would still pay it.

> Increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 by July 1, 2015, would raise the wages of about 30 million workers, who would receive over $51 billion in additional wages over the phase-in period.

> Across the phase-in period of the minimum-wage increase, GDP would increase by roughly $32.6 billion, resulting in the creation of approximately 140,000 net new jobs (and 284,000 job years) over that period.

30 million out of 156 million workers is ~19.2% of the workforce. Not nothing and not to mention the knock-on effects it'll have for workers just barely above that

The second link specifically analyzes both localized and federal minimum wage increases and explicitly tackles the question "Are the Effects Bigger When More Workers are Affected?"

> The pattern of results for nominal consumption growth are similar—the direct spending response is somewhat stronger than when we do not control for the share of low-wage workers across locations, and there is evidence of a small but positive differential effect in areas with a higher share of low-wage workers

The third is a collection of research looking at wage increases in general, not just minimum wage (contrary to OP's comment)

Yes, I was definitely speaking from the U.S. perspective (typical american stereotype).