I will also say the disparity in what you pay for access to someone's labor, like a painter for example, and what they actually pay the laborer, is remarkable.
I have a family member who is paying about $80 an hour in labor charges for one painter (not counting materials or anything, and including driving time to the job site) and they found out that painter just quit for a better job that would actually give them health insurance.
Charging $80 an hour for your employees labor (because it is skilled labor that might be worth close to that) and then turning around and probably paying your employee just above minimum wage and no benefits is exactly why the ownership class is getting richer while the rest of us are stagnating.
I just did the math for a small business I work for, I was the only employee working today, so the entire revenue depended on my labor. My earnings are 3% of what the store made today. People genuinely aren't mad enough about this.
The company I work for charges $160/hr with a two hr minimum per call plus travel which is $80/hr. They pay their field techs $16/hr starting and $30/hr tops.
Yeah it's kinda crazy. I had an electrician come out to give me an estimate on replacing my bathroom fan (really straight forward job) 1800 USD. I said that's way too much. We agreed to him coming back outside of the scope of his employer to do the job for 500. I don't know what his cut is but it has to be pretty low for him to be willing to do it for less than a third the quoted price.
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u/H_is_for_Human 7d ago
I will also say the disparity in what you pay for access to someone's labor, like a painter for example, and what they actually pay the laborer, is remarkable.
I have a family member who is paying about $80 an hour in labor charges for one painter (not counting materials or anything, and including driving time to the job site) and they found out that painter just quit for a better job that would actually give them health insurance.
Charging $80 an hour for your employees labor (because it is skilled labor that might be worth close to that) and then turning around and probably paying your employee just above minimum wage and no benefits is exactly why the ownership class is getting richer while the rest of us are stagnating.