The way it was originally explained is that rich business men would by things and would hire people to work for them, and by doing that those people that they hired would have money and would therefore hire people and buy things, and those people that were hired and bought things would create jobs for more people that would buy things. (it's vague, i get that)
So, I thought I would look at the country's top employers. (hired the most people, not were the nicest.) I'm not going to look at the government jobs although between all the various departments, they are the biggest. I will leave that to someone with higher security clearance than I have.
Number one is Walmart. They employ over 2.2 million people. Their average pay is $8.81/hour. If they work full-time that is over $18,000/year. Walmart prefer part time as they then don't have to provide benefits such as insurance, vacation, or sick time. Their CEO makes $19,000,000/year. The owners made a profit of $3.1 billion in 2014. It is very hard to imagine anyone working at the same company being 1000x more important, but when you consider that $19,000,000 is a guarantee that the CEO will side with the profit over the fairness to the employees, it was Fortune 400 chump change well spent.
Next is Yum! brands, employing over half a million people. Who? The biggest fast food corporation in the country. They are currently down to TACO BELL, KFC, Pizza Hut and Wing Street. They pay most employees minimum age, and under $13.00/hour for managers, with a big jump for financial analysts (over $100,000/year) (aww, so money is more important that what you sell!, got it)). The CEO made $11.3 million plus a nice stock package. This is a Fortune 500 company.
Third on the list is McDonald's, employing slightly less than half a million people. The bottom pay is as low as they can legally go, the company does seem to offer improvement for those individuals that aren't just "fast food workers" though. Throw in the fact that a very large number of McDonald's are franchises, and thus employed by the owner of the Franchise, and you start seeing that pay information may or may not be reliable. The CEO stepped down in January this year, and had recently seen a decrease in compensation so he was making less than $10 million/year. The franchise owners, a big part of McDonalds profits (from selling/leasing/whatever you call that), were not doing as well as they expected. A lot of mom's and pop's saw a franchise as a grab at the brass ring. In a lot of those shops, the franchise owners are working longer hours and for less money than they had ever thought possible.
IBM also employees slightly less than half a million people. The CEO of this company recently saw her salary increase to over 1.5 million. The average salary is $75,000/year. While their is much grinching about low pay for experience, and less than great pay for very skilled positions, I have nothing to say. (Makes me think that we may be looking at two different populations.)
Next is KROGER. Kroger is the second largest supermarket chain in the USA. It employees 400,000 people. In 2014 the CEO made about $9.5 million. Most jobs start between minimum wage and $15.00/hour.
Now, Target, employing about 400,000 also.(besides the familiar Target bull's eye, they have Dayton's, Hudson's, Marshall Field's, and Mervyns) Their pay scale for workers looks like Kroger's. starts at minimum and tops out fast till you get to the big main offices. CEO in 2014, $28.2 million.
Home Depot, whom I owe my soul and first born due to basic repairs, pays $8.00 to $23.00 and hour, with most being under $11.00/hour. CEO--$1.3 million for a Bachelors in Business. He did really improve their profits.
Hewlett Packard employees about 300,000 people, the CEO recieved $1.5 million with a compensation packet worth $19.5 million. (I'm guess that is more than sick time and insurance). Average employee salaries look to run slightly less than IBM, so IBM might not grinch so much.
General Electric, which is older than me--at least--is next on the list, also employing about 300,000, but slightly fewer than HP (like GE only different). GE is a huge, multinational conglomerate with a bunch of branches, . It is the most
profitable corporation in the USA. CEO last year was compensated over $18.5 million.
- GE Capital
- GE Energy Management
- Industrial Solutions
- GE Power Electronics
- GE Power Components
- GE Critical Power
- GE Intelligent Platforms
- Power Conversion
- Digital Energy
- Industrial Solutions
- GE Oil & Gas
- GE Power & Water
- GE Home & Business Solutions
- GE Appliances
- Consumer Electronics
- GE Lighting
- GE Intelligent Platforms
- Electric Insurance Company
GE Technology Infrastructure
Healthcare
Former
- NBCUniversal (now owned by Comcast)
Sears is next, with wages that look like they start at the minimum.
The list goes on, but there is a theme--these huge employers have very well paid top staff, very average for function paid skilled employees and a whole lot of bottom rung employees that need government assistance.
The argument about raising the minimum wage hurting the small business owners was probably created by the big dogs that can pay all the c-suite and investors big money bonuses out of the money they saved paying the minimum and slightly higher wage earners barely enough. (that means our taxes are subsidizing their bonuses--they didn't hire a single low wage person whose job didn't have to be done, they are important, but our current supply of unskilled or low skilled workers is high and every company loves to act like the are hiring them out of the goodness of their heart. Don't buy it. I can't find someone to mow my lawn for less than 40$/hour. They bring the equipment but if the lawn job--think every 14 year old boys summer business--is worth more than minimum, then probably cleaning your toilet and wiping up the mess from your kid in the Mctoy house is also.
Most of us have at least one relative that is stuck in the world of minimum wage. It's tough. It was tough 40 years ago and is 4 times worse now. Back then you could find an apt that took about half your take-home and it was all bills paid. You could get gas for under 50 cents a gallon, bread could be found at 4 loaves for a dollar, tuna for a couple of quarters--and the TV was free if a bit snowy at times. If desperate one month because your budget was wrecked by a car breakdown or a medical bill, you could live on baloney sandwiches for a month and survive. Basically, eat badly for $10 dollars a month, but eat every day.
Welfare expects $4/person per day anymore. And that is also eating badly.
Every struggling person I know (and a lot that are no longer struggling so much), loves to gripe about the lazy, idiot that should have gone to 1. school, 2. college, 3. stayed out of jail, 4. stayed off drugs, etc. etc, etc, read as "I'm pointing my finger at you because no matter how hard I have it, I didn't screw up as bad as you did" It's what we do. It's sort of like looking down your nose at the handicapped person and saying "I'm just grateful that isn't me" then griping because they get government assistance. The fact that we have groups of people that are outsiders that we think of as welfare people--other races, other religions, nontraditional lifestyles, foreign-born, makes bigotry even easier to maintain.
But let's face it. We will never hate the rich, successful CEO, the highly reimbursed investor.
We just want to be them.
It's how we measure success these days.
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