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The “middle class” myth: Here’s why wages are really so low today
- johnmaynard 13y agoAmericans have a funny idea about what the middle class is compared to what I know in the UK. He talks about people working in meat processing as being middle class if they get a good wage. WTF? In my mind middle class jobs are doctor, lawyer, professor, politician. Then the aristocracy are upper class. I guess you don't have an aristocracy in the US who I don't know what counts as upper class there.
- lmkg 13y agoIn America, the majority of the country self-identifies as middle-class, and in conversation and political rhetoric we basically use it as a synonym for "normal people." Not that the UK is wrong, but I think our usage matches the name a bit better. Doctor/lawyer-type professions are a bit exclusive to call them the middle. If someone is trying to pull statistics, "middle class" is defined by income to usually be either the middle 3 quintiles (60%) of the population, or an income between $25k-ish and $200k-ish. Doctors, Lawyers, etc. are usually on the top end of that range, and called upper-middle class.
- justincormack 13y agoMost people in the UK self-identify as middle class now too actually.
- lafar6502 13y agoJust as most people consider their IQ to be above average.
- tolmasky 13y agoIf you are using the mean for the average (which is quite common), then it is completely possible for most people to have their IQ be above average (not saying it is, just saying there's nothing mathematically wrong if it is).
- eurleif 13y agoExcept that IQs are explicitly made to fit a normal distribution.
- justincormack 13y agoThe "middle" class has never been defined as any kind of "average" class.
- Crito 13y agoWell, half of them are correct (assuming a normal distribution, which IQ tests have by design).
- voodoomagicman 13y agoThe income range for the middle 3 quintiles is actually about $20k - $100k. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Quintiles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...)
- maxerickson 13y agoFor U.S. households, the 4th quintile tops out around $100,000. $200,000 is in the top 5%. For individuals, $100,000 is in the top 10%.
- tehaaron 13y agoI am from the US and when I hear fast food workers being referred to as middle class it always surprises me. Can you really afford to rent or buy a house, or buy a relatively new car, or pay on any substantial debt with the income from KFC? I guess more importantly do we really expect that someone should be able to? Should even the lowest paying of jobs be enough to do such things? I know as a kid working a minimum wage job I never expected that I should be able afford more than gas, snacks, and games until I had a "real job". I am curious if our economy could even afford to provide a "living wage" for virtually all jobs.
- mjolk 13y agoI didn't realize that minimum wage earners make enough to afford video games. I realize that minimum wage is not much money, but if a KFC worker tunnels her off-time into something other than personal growth, that's a different problem.
- tehaaron 13y agoIts enough if you're a kid still living at home under the age of 18 :) but you're right about anyone beyond that, I would hope they don't spend the money on video games!
- mjolk 13y agoAh, that's what I thought, but I thought I'd ask to be sure. I've been living in NYC where the neighborhood you live in and the industry you work in can make you lose sight of how others live. Thanks for the response.
- boomlinde 13y agoI think the post makes sense if you assume that "as a kid" implies housing conditions different to those of rent payers or people with mortgages.
- Crito 13y ago"I never expected that I should be able afford more than gas, snacks, and games until I had a "real job"." Rent/mortgage is notably absent from that list, so presumably they do not expect a minimum wage earner to be living on their own. With that assumption, it is reasonable that a minimum wage earner is making enough to keep themselves entertained when not working (though ideally they should of course be saving). Minimum wage really is not built as an independent living wage (let alone a living wage for people that have children, despite what some people think). Some other form of support is assumed.
- vezzy-fnord 13y agoIn my mind middle class jobs are doctor, lawyer, professor, politician. Highly relative. By default these are considered upper middle class, although in certain cases they can be either middle class or upper class. Remember, middle class isn't a solidly defined term. It has nuances and ranges. Anyway, concerning the article: tl;dr Wages are low because labor unions aren't influential enough.
- Domenic_S 13y agoRight. Michael Jackson's doctor earned a much different salary from the pediatrician you had growing up. Lots and lots of lawyers earn barely enough to get by, especially these days.
- bigtech 13y agoI'd say we split middle class into groups, and the meat processor might be something like 'lower middle', while a professional would be 'upper middle'.
- jiggy2011 13y agoIt seems that the UK places a much greater emphasis on social factors when determining class. Class has as much to do with what accent you speak with, where you went to school and what your parents did for a living as it does your bank balance.
- sp332 13y agoIn America, politicians and the media in general have a serious allergy to the phrase "working class".
- jiggy2011 13y agoIn the UK politicians seem to try avoiding using the word class altogether.
- EliRivers 13y agoThe US has an aristocracy. One of their achievements is convincing everyone else they're not.
- melling 13y agoWhat percent of the population has those jobs? And what's the average income of those jobs? There are 317 million Americans, for example, and the average income is around $50,000. I think these jobs are a small percentage and pay well above average.
- officemonkey 13y agoI tend to break "middle-class" from "upper-class" right around the $100,000 salary mark. If you're making $100,000/year, you're very likely upper class in the U.S. Of course, this doesn't work well in big cities (where the cost of living raises the bar to upper class a bit,) but it's remarkably accurate for most places in the country.
- ImprovedSilence 13y agoit might be enough to make a 22 yr old in Mississippi upper class, but in no sense of the word is 100k upper class. Especially if you've got a family. I'd say upper class starts where you have enough money to live off the interest. Drs, lawyers, etc are upper middle. And industrial wage earners and most fresh college grads are lower middle. 100-200k earners would be middle middle. Aristocracy isn't really much of a thing. Yeah, there's plenty of "old money", but that falls into the upper class category. As stated in another comment, in the US, it's really the size of you bank account, not your name, or your accent, or where your from, or what school you went to, or what "estate" you live in that matters.
- iamjustin 13y ago>100-200k earners would be middle middle? 100-200k for households puts you in the top 10%. Individuals, maybe top 5%. How is that not upper class!? I wish I was even low middle according to your scale... For reference: Income in 1999 Households..................................105,539,122 100.0 Less than $10,000............................10,067,027 9.5 $10,000 to $14,999............................6,657,228 6.3 $15,000 to $24,999...........................13,536,965 12.8 $25,000 to $34,999...........................13,519,242 12.8 $35,000 to $49,999...........................17,446,272 16.5 $50,000 to $74,999...........................20,540,604 19.5 $75,000 to $99,999...........................10,799,245 10.2 $100,000 to $149,999..........................8,147,826 7.7 $150,000 to $199,999..........................2,322,038 2.2 $200,000 or more............................. 2,502,675 2.4 Median family income (dollars)..................50,046 Per capita income (dollars).....................21,587 Median earnings (dollars): Male full-time, year-round workers..............37,057 Female full-time, year-round workers............27,194 http://censtats.census.gov/data/US/01000.pdf http://censtats.census.gov/data/US/01000.pdf
- olefoo 13y agoRough answer; in the US you are part of the upper class if most of your income is derived from assets not wages. It's not a precise answer; but as a functional definition it works.
- Domenic_S 13y agoBingo. And you're part of the lower class if you need SNAP/food stamps/welfare/etc. Everything else is middle-class.
- rayiner 13y agoIn the U.S., we have four classes: poor, middle, upper middle, rich. Poor is if you're on welfare (excluding Social Security). Nearly everyone else is middle class. Most doctors or lawyers would consider themselves upper middle class, but so would say a former construction worker who bought his construction business and now pulls in similar income. Very few people consider themselves "upper class" or "rich" and not for altogether invalid reasons. First, people compare themselves to the people around them, not against the whole population. People who you might expect to self-identify as "rich" have tremendously less occurrence of single-parent households, which drags down the national median household income of $50k/year. The national median household incomd for a married couple with kids is much higher, at $80k. In a major metro area, say DuPage County in the Chicago suburbs, the median household income for a married couple is over $100k/year. Second, it's difficult for people to consider themselves rich when even with a $200k/year income, their kids might have to take out student loans (top-notch American schools can cost over $50k/year). At the extremes, this phenomenon leads to some people working on Wall Street in New York self-identifying as upper middle class. The median price for a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan is $1.35 million. It's hard to call yourself "rich" even making $250k/year HHI when you can't even afford a modest home near your work!
- Domenic_S 13y agoYep, and I think there's a hump that's in the $100-300k range where you start really socking away money for retirement and get your investment portfolio started which siphons money away from your raw purchasing power. In that hump your purchasing power doesn't increase linearly with income like it did before which contributes to the feeling of... futility maybe? Like, man this is a great big pile of cash and all I'm doing is saving it for when I'm 65. I still can't buy a house. What am I doing with my life?!
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoYep. I watch those house hunting shows on TV and see houses in like the Midwest that I could buy outright with what I paid as a down payment on my house. But then... I don't want to live in the Midwest. :) And if I did live there, I probably would not have made a big enough salary to get that much cash in the first place. Catch-22 I guess.
- lurkinggrue 13y ago> I guess you don't have an aristocracy in the US who I don't know what counts as upper class there. Donald Trump and Paris Hilton.
- gaius 13y agoThe lower class will never get a mortgage, the upper class will never need a mortgage, the middle class live or die by the mortgage rate. I don't know who said it originally, but that's the most useful way to describe it that I've found.
- patrickg_zill 13y agoWhat will it matter what a US-based slaughterhouse worker is paid, when WalMart gets its way and is able to import Chinese-produced, Chinese-slaughtered, and Chinese-packaged meat? Already much of the seafood is from Thailand and Chinese sources (check the label at your local supermarket). (And how often is such food tested for antibiotics that are legal there, but banned here? Is a question I would like the answer to...)
- kelnos 13y agoAgreed. And also, wouldn't effectively raising the minimum wage to ~$20 and jacking up wages across the board cause the price of goods to increase enough such that a $20/hr wage is below the poverty line? That money has to come from somewhere, and I imagine most employers would elect to pass those costs on to the consumer.
- stefan_kendall 13y agoSmaller companies would fold, larger companies would pay more in the short term, and become much more capital efficient in the long-term. When the minimum wage increases, the ROI of replacing people with machines changes, and yields higher R per I. If just the "companies that can bear it" bear it, you'll get less of those stores, as the expected profit yield per store decreases. Less stores is less competition, which will yield higher prices.
- dredmorbius 13y agoA big challenge with imports is quality, and the quality of imported Chinese food products has been found highly wanting. It's even considered suspect in China, which is among the reasons Smithfield Foods, an American pork processor, was bought by a Chinese company last year: http://www.pigprogress.net/Pork-Processing/Meat-Companies/2013/6/China-buys-Americas-largest-pork-processor-1275899W/ http://www.pigprogress.net/Pork-Processing/Meat-Companies/20...
- Rylinks 13y ago>Stanley’s wages would be the equivalent of $17.17 today — more than the “Fight For 15” movement is demanding for fast-food workers. Stanley’s job was more difficult, more dangerous and more unpleasant than working the fryer at KFC (the blast furnace could heat up to 2,000 degrees). According to the laws of the free market, though, none of that is supposed to matter. What "laws of the free market" are those?
- VikingCoder 13y agoSupply and demand. If there are an over-abundant supply of workers, then wages should tend to lower over time.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 13y agoI'll post in more length later, but Smith's Wealth includes a detailed passage on what determines wages.
- kansface 13y agoEmployee wages are governed by supply and demand in a free market- ie, outside of government interference, unions, etc. |According to the laws of the free market, though, none of that is supposed to matter. I'm surprised this statement made it through editing. There is a lower supply of workers for dangerous jobs hence they are paid better (see any number of dangerous jobs).
- nilkn 13y ago> According to the laws of the free market, though, none of that is supposed to matter. All that is supposed to matter is how many people are capable of doing your job. While by no means do I disagree with the article as a whole, this seems obviously false. Why would you not expect a higher wage for a more dangerous job, even if otherwise it doesn't have a higher skill or knowledge barrier to entry? I know I'd certainly want to make more money shoveling taconite into a blast furnace compared to taking fast-food orders. Given two such jobs at the same wage, I'd take the second one.
- mattmcknight 13y agothe author should have said "capable and willing", not just capable. I did disagree with the article as a whole though- it was union wages and government enforced monopolies on union labor supply that pushed many jobs to countries with lower costs. What this purely nationalistic view fails to account for is how much wages worldwide have risen over the past 50 years. http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/12/chart-of-the-greatest-and-most-remarkable-achievement-in-human-history-and-one-you-probably-never-heard-about http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/12/chart-of-the-greatest-and-m...
- iaskwhy 13y agoFood industry is actually one of the easiest for consumers to change since a good percentage of the population in the US does have access to markets with lots of providers, right? I know it's like that in most (all?) European counties. You go to the supermarket and you decide which pockets you want to fill: the local producer or the guy from the other continent far far away. It's easier in some counties. For example, while in London, I was able to buy a very good percentage of local food, even bio stuff. As I travelled through Europe last year, I was able to do the same in every country I went to. I was driving around and that certainly helped getting to the big supermarkets but I also went to smallers shops and, while not perfect, it was still possible to choose products based on its origin.
- jedmeyers 13y agoIf you want bananas in Australia - tough luck, mate.
- iaskwhy 13y agoThis is kind of obvious but if there are no local producers of something, like bananas in Australia, you have some options: do not buy it (you don't need to eat everything), buy it from a responsible source (tip: buy bananas from the Madeira Island, those are great!), add an exception to your .localignore brain file. Now, I went on to check what's the closest source of bananas for Australia and, well, Australia does produce around 200k tonnes of bananas every year[1]: https://www.dropbox.com/s/iomsvbzcaizcfh7/FAOSTAT_2014-01-02_23-24-42.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/iomsvbzcaizcfh7/FAOSTAT_2014-01-02... Sources: [1] http://faostat3.fao.org/faostat-gateway/go/to/download/Q/QC/E http://faostat3.fao.org/faostat-gateway/go/to/download/Q/QC/...
- jedmeyers 13y agoNow here is the problem: since Australia is "protecting" local producers and does not allow foreign grown bananas on the market Australians have to pay ridiculous prices for them, or wait until they rot and pay half the price, or just not have them at all.
- hooande 13y agoThis article could be summarized as: "Things were better for working people when this country had strong unions." A response could be summarized as: "Times, they are a' changin'" * There are 50% more people in the US than there were in 1965, the year used as an example in the article. Up to 316MM from 194MM [1]. This means more people competing for jobs, which weakens the power of unions. Many of those people are immigrants from countries where the US dollar goes a long way. It's hard to bargain when there are dozens of applicants lined up, many of which have at least a two year degree. * Market consolidation happened. This means that workers can't easily move to another job if they don't like their wages. Consolidation also means more competition with big enemies and fiercer battles for margins. Small companies have room to negotiate. Big companies live and die by quarterly earnings reports, and lowering wages is always a convenient go to. * Unions cause obvious financial problems. Most unions do far more good than harm. But there are multiple examples of cutting open the golden goose. Many unions have collectively bargained too well, nearly bankrupting their employers with poorly calculated pensions and benefits. Once a union fights hard to earn a concession they can almost never give it back, no matter how damaging it becomes. Unions are not bad things. Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to get as much work out of employees for as little compensation as is practical. It's good to have that balanced by organizations who have a responsibility to their members to get as much from the corporation as is practical. The lack of unions and organized labor isn't what's ailing the middle class of this country. Capitalism is a greedy optimization function. At the extremes it doesn't do "middle". Not to discuss a different topic, but ideas like basic income combined with increased automation could be like a collective bargaining for every citizen. By making work effectively optional, employers will lose some of their leverage and employees won't have to be on the defensive. [1] http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table
- EliRivers 13y agoThis means more people competing for jobs, which weakens the power of unions. It also means more jobs, which lowers competition for jobs.
- rayiner 13y ago> Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to get as much work out of employees for as little compensation as is practical. This is a myth. Under the prevailing (Delaware) law, corporations actually have a lot of leeway in this regard. If corporate executives wanted to pay more, they would be totally entitled to do so, and lawsuits wouldn't be able to stop the practice. What they would have to worry about is the private equity companies. An otherwise functioning business paying higher salaries than absolutely necessary could be a ripe takeover target.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago> According to the laws of the free market, though, none of that is supposed to matter. All that is supposed to matter is how many people are capable of doing your job. This statement about the "laws of the free market" is an erroneous claim. Look up "compensating differential."
- jbellis 13y agoI had to look it up. For the lazy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensating_differential http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensating_differential
- at-fates-hands 13y agoThis article has so many fatal flaws, I have no idea where to start. For starters - Unions are great, I mean, just ask Detroit how awesome they are. The unions absolutely buried that city in unfunded pensions: http://www.freep.com/interactive/article/20130915/NEWS01/130801004/Detroit-Bankruptcy-history-1950-debt-pension-revenue http://www.freep.com/interactive/article/20130915/NEWS01/130... "Even in recent years, when no one questioned that the health care tab had been ballooning, city leaders failed to cut costs because of intense pressure from unions. Adverse court and arbitration rulings also stymied the city’s best efforts to cut. The city’s spending on retiree health care soared 46% from 2000 to 2012, even as general fund revenue fell by 20%." From the article: "The anti-labor movement’s greatest victory has been in preventing the unionization of the jobs that have replaced well-paying industrial work." This is such a myth. Right now there's a HUGE shortage of skilled labor in this country - most in non-unionized fields: http://www.scdigest.com/ontarget/13-11-06-3.php?cid=7555 http://www.scdigest.com/ontarget/13-11-06-3.php?cid=7555 "Companies that make tangible products are struggling to find candidates for about 237,000 job openings. To put that figure in perspective, it's 89,000 more than the entire U.S. economy created in September." "But worse, the under 30 crowd simply does not see manufacturing work as an attractive option. That may be due to some misconceptions about new age manufacturing jobs, says Paul Gerbino, head of ThomasNet News. Many young workers don't even think about manufacturing as a career "because they don't realize that factory jobs are not what they were in the old days," says Gerbino. "Many of these jobs involve sophisticated technology" he told Fortune, and with that comes improved pay. Salaries can start at $50,000 or more, and climb to well over $100,000 a year for skilled, experienced engineers and technicians. The Thomas.Net study found that 59% of small and medium-size manufacturers are planning to hire skilled trade workers - that is, if they can find them." Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the author's assertion we need more unions to protect the "working wages".
- EliRivers 13y agoRight now there's a HUGE shortage of skilled labor in this country Maybe if they paid more than unskilled labour, they'd fill those posts. www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/magazine/skills-dont-pay-the-bills.html
- pbreit 13y agoI think perhaps in the US, unions have given themselves a bad name with some particularly excessive contracts. I'm thinking of the unions who hold their companies hostage to the point of bankruptcy.
- bluedino 13y agoNice try. The author tries to give the credit to unions. The author forgets to note that the steel industry was in a 100-year long boom in the United States. We were making the majority of steel used in the world. He also uses the year 1965. Just a few years later in the 1970's the steel industry in this country started to take a huge dive. Why? They priced themselves out of the market. Steel was cheaper everywhere else. One look at this graph tells a grim story. Imagine if it went back to the 1900's instead of just 1980. http://www.marketsize.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/IronSteel.jpg http://www.marketsize.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Ir... Can you imagine what the air quality, or lack of was like back then? Now, just multiply the loss of the steel industry with all of the others that we've lost over the years, like the auto industry. It's easy to see where the jobs went. The rest of the world simply caught up.
- xname 13y agoI was thinking, where this sh#t came from, why am I reading this sh$t? I traced back to feedly, then I found this is from hacker news. Why this sh*t is posted on hacker news????? Why????????????????????????????????????????
- dredmorbius 13y agoWhile there's some truth in this article, there's a lot of confusion as well. Edward McClelland claims that "the laws of the free market", differing compensation for different types of work, and for work of differing degrees of unpleasantness and risk, should be compensated equally. While there are some within present economic circles who'd argue that, if you go back to Adam Smith (insufficiently read by either economists or their critics), you'll find he actually expands at some length on this in Chapters VIII and X of Book I of The Wealth of Nations. Edited for length (the 18th century was a time of considerably more leisurely writing...). The precis: general wage levels should cover the basic needs of survival, and are established by whether or not general employment is growing, steady, or declining, with the favorability to labor being best in the first and worst in the last case. Compensation for specific types of works varies according to five factors identified by Smith: agreeableness of the work (which reduces pay), cost of acquiring a skill (which increases it), regularity of employment (decreases), trust required of the worker (increases), and the probability of success (less risk: lower reward). Incidentally, this answers the question of why college professors are relatively poorly paid ("If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?"): while the job requires considerable education, it's agreeable, highly regular, relatively low on the trust metric, and (for tenured positions) carries very low risk. And hence: the pay is adequate, but generally modest. Back to Smith.... First, Chapter VIII notes that it's the increase or decrease in the economic output of a country, not its total size, which sets the prevailing wage rate. A smaller economy growing faster than a larger one will pay better yet have lower prevailing prices. Smith also notes that pay must always be sufficient to cover living expenses, a point somewhat lost on WalMart and McDonalds of late: A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.... There are certain circumstances, however, which sometimes give the labourers an advantage, and enable them to raise their wages considerably above this rate, evidently the lowest which is consistent with common humanity. When in any country the demand for those who live by wages, labourers, journeymen, servants of every kind, is continually increasing; when every year furnishes employment for a greater number than had been employed the year before, the workmen have no occasion to combine in order to raise their wages. The scarcity of hands occasions a competition among masters, who bid against one another in order to get workmen, and thus voluntarily break through the natural combination of masters not to raise wages.... It is not the actual greatness of national wealth, but its continual increase, which occasions a rise in the wages of labour. It is not, accordingly, in the richest countries, but in the most thriving, or in those which are growing rich the fastest, that the wages of labour are highest. In Chapter X, wage differentials by type of work: The five following are the principal circumstances which, so far as I have been able to observe, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counterbalance a great one in others. First, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning them; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them; fourthly, the small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them; and, fifthly, the probability or improbability of success in them. First, the wages of labour vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the honourableness or dishonourableness, of the employment. Thus in most places, take the year round, a journeyman tailor earns less than a journeyman weaver. His work is much easier. A journeyman weaver earns less than a journeyman smith. His work is not always easier, but it is much cleanlier.... Hunting and fishing, the most important employments of mankind in the rude state of society, become, in its advanced state, their most agreeable amusements.... Secondly, the wages of labour vary with the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense, of learning the business. When any expensive machine is erected, the extraordinary work to be performed by it before it is worn out, it must be expected, will replace the capital laid out upon it, with at least the ordinary profits. A man educated at the expense of much labour and time to any of those employments which require extraordinary dexterity and skill, may be compared to one of those expensive machines.... The difference between the wages of skilled labour and those of common labour, is founded upon this principle.... [I]n order to qualify any person for exercising the one species of labour, ... [custom imposes] the necessity of an apprenticeship.... During the continuance of the apprenticeship, the whole labour of the apprentice belongs to his master. In the meantime he must ... be maintained by his parents or relations... Some money, too, is commonly given to the master..... [O]n the contrary, the labourer, while he is employed about the easier, learns the more difficult parts of his business... It is reasonable ... [that] the wages of mechanics, artificers, and manufacturers, should be somewhat higher than those of common labourers.... This superiority, however, is generally very small: the daily or weekly earnings of journeymen in the more common sorts of manufactures ... are, in most places, very little more than the day-wages of common labourers. Their employment, indeed, is more steady and uniform, and the superiority of their earnings, taking the whole year together, may be somewhat greater.... Education in the ingenious arts, and in the liberal professions, is still more tedious and expensive. The pecuniary recompence, therefore, of painters and sculptors, of lawyers and physicians, ought to be much more liberal; and it is so accordingly. Thirdly, the wages of labour in different occupations vary with the constancy or inconstancy of employment.... A mason or bricklayer ... can work neither in hard frost nor in foul weather... What he earns, therefore, while he is employed, must not only maintain him while he is idle, but make him some compensation for those anxious and desponding moments [he awaits employment]... [Any contractor should be familiar with this circumstance ... Ed] When the inconstancy of employment is combined with the hardship, disagreeableness, and dirtiness of the work, it sometimes raises the wages of the most common labour above those of the most skilful artificers. A collier working by the piece is supposed, at Newcastle, to earn commonly about double [or more] ... the wages of common labour ... [arising] altogether from the hardship, disagreeableness, and dirtiness of his work.... Fourthly, the wages of labour vary according to the small or great trust which must be reposed in the workmen. The wages of goldsmiths and jewellers are everywhere superior to those of many other workmen ... on account of the precious materials with which they are entrusted.... Such confidence could not safely be reposed in people of a very mean or low condition.... [Entrepreneurs pay attention to the next .. Ed] Fifthly, the wages of labour in different employments vary according to the probability or improbability of success in them. *The probability that any particular person shall ever be qualified for the employments to which he is educated, is very different in different occupations.... In a perfectly fair lottery, those who draw the prizes ought to gain all that is lost by those who draw the blanks. In a profession, where twenty fail for one that succeeds, that one ought to gain all that should have been gained by the unsuccessful twenty. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm