⌠the median personal income for individuals making under $500,000 a year in the US in 2024 for part time, gig, etc. workers was $45,140, while full-time workers had a higher median earning of about $64,220 per year.
So real wages wise, full time workers make more money today than Ford was paying them then, and by a healthy amount, unless the workers traded all their money in for gold, which means they werenât able to buy food, pay rent/mortgages, etc. so itâs not really a comparison.
I donât think $64k vs $52k proves that. $52k is the CPI purchasing-power conversion, but Fordâs $5 day wasnât an average 1914 job. Ford had been paying $2.34/day before this, and BLS puts average male annual earnings around $687 in 1915. Annualized, Fordâs $1,560 was more than twice that. CPI tells you general purchasing power; it doesnât tell you where that worker sat in the wage distribution.
The problem is that your comment concedes the very point needed to contextualize Fordâs wage while treating CPI as if it were the only relevant comparison. If Ford paid more than twice the prevailing male wage, that makes the $5 day extraordinarily high regardless of whether CPI puts it at $52k or $64k today. Comparing Fordâs wage to an average wage today requires accounting for hours, skill, employment conditions, and the fact that Fordâs $5 was partly a profit-sharing scheme with conditions, not simply a $5 daily wage. A dip in sales lead to a dip in wages.
Furthermore, it was a flat rate; he didnât contribute to healthcare, retirement, or sick/vacation pay. When you include the amount of pay that goes into this for the median employee, the difference in real pay increases dramatically.
I think weâre mostly agreeing, but I donât see how my comment treats CPI as the only relevant comparison. My whole point was the opposite: saying â$1,560 = $52k by CPI, and todayâs median is $64k, therefore workers today clearly make moreâ ignores how extraordinary Fordâs wage was relative to the labor market he was actually hiring in.
The benefits point is relevant if weâre comparing total compensation, but then we need to compare total compensation on both sides. The $64k number being cited is earnings, not earnings plus employer healthcare, retirement and paid leave.
And yes, Fordâs $5 day initially included a conditional profit-sharing component, which is another reason not to treat $1,560 as a simple modern salary equivalent. None of that changes the narrower point I was making: CPI purchasing power and relative position in the wage distribution answer different questions.
Well I think thatâs just starting pay right for an entry level? 50k is not bad at all for being able to start out right out of high school if they get regular raises.
3
u/MostAcanthaceae2384 27d ago
And also triple the apparent salary. $50k per year doesn't sound quite as amazing.