It looks like that article mixes its units. "Profit margin" is usually taken as net profit margin, and 8.89% is a reasonable average. No business stays in busin

It looks like that article mixes its units. "Profit margin" is usually taken as net profit margin, and 8.89% is a reasonable average. No business stays in business with a 9% operating margin. So then the article compares net profit margin of the average company with the operating margin of the railroads. This is completely invalid. So much so that either the author of the article is incompetent or deceptive. Union Pacific has a net profit margin of about 29%, which is a little higher than Apple (25% most recently), so definitely quite a nice margin, although not as good as Visa (about 50% the past few years) or Equity Residential (50%; I believe they own large numbers of apartment complexes in cities). I'm not defending the lack of sick leave, but that profit margin figure is just wrong.