A dollar is not worth as much as it was in 1975. That’s something most people are aware of. What most people don’t realize is that some American workers would be better off today if wages had adjusted to inflation, but they haven’t. Not even close.
That’s not just a conceptual space. It appears in the rent checks, retirement accounts, and the sluggish figure of the job that paid less in 2024 than it paid 50 years ago, when the dollar’s value had completely changed.
The curious thing is that this did not occur in the case of a hazy employment. It happened to the people who built houses, taught kids, and stocked the grocery shelves, things that wouldn’t go away and never ceased to matter. The economy grew. Productivity climbed. But during that ascent, some employees were left behind. But during that rise, some workers were unknowingly left behind.
The trades that built everything:
The trades that built everything
In 1975, construction workers were paid more than many entry-level and journeymen construction workers today in large portions of the nation, when wages are compared in today’s dollars, using data from the BLS. In fact, construction laborers’ median real wage rose to its highest levels decades prior to the 2008 housing crisis, and has yet to return to that level. The same trend can be seen among manufacturing employees.
The actual middle-class wages of factory workers during the mid-1970s have been shrinking for a number of reasons, including offshoring, automation, and the steady loss of union membership, all of which have reduced workers’ inflation-adjusted wages. Nearly a quarter of workers in the private sector were unionized in 1975. It’s under 6% now. One number says it all.
The jobs that could not get along.The jobs that didn’t get along.
The jobs that should have kept up
Grocery store clerks. Short-order cooks. Well before the word home health aide was coined, home health aides existed. Many of these jobs were around in 1975, and they still are around now – and the real growth in wages over the past 25 years has been either flat or down for the majority of these jobs.
A full-time grocery clerk in 1975 would make between $18 and $22, depending on location and contract, an hourly rate in today’s dollars. In 2024, the national median of cashiers was around $14. This is no rounding error! This is a change of course.
As the newspaper industry has shrunk, it’s been a middle-class occupation, with union contracts and defined benefit pensions, that’s been watched by newspaper journalists over the decades as real wages have declined. Median annual wages of news analysts, reporters, rs and journalists, which were adjusted for inflation, are noticeably lower than the peaks of the 1970s. Now, a second income is needed to pay rent, and the job that once paid for a house in a mid-sized American city is now a lot more common.
The Federal Minimum covers the safety aspect of trucking. The Federal Minimum is about safety for teachers and truckers.
Teachers, Truckers, and the Federal minimum
In 1975, the pay of public school teachers was about equal to or slightly above the average in many states today, and they were provided with defined-benefit pensions that are no longer available in most public schools. In real terms, the income of teachers has increased by less than 1% in 50 years. In some studies, it’s negative.
One of the more interesting situations is that of long-haul truck drivers. The Teamsters’ bargaining power was obliterated, and the pay model was completely changed when the trucking industry was deregulated five years after our baseline in 1980. The weaker union jobs of 1975 would be almost as likely to be deemed independent contractors today, as drivers have to pay gas and maintenance expenses out of pocket. The nominal wage seems to be comparable. The take-home truth is that there is no.
Not to mention the federal minimum wage, which was $2.10 an hour in 1975. That was the equivalent of about $12 to $13 in today’s dollar value, compared with the current federal minimum wage of $7.25; a rate unchanged since 2009. The maths is awkward. Today, a full-time worker receiving the federal minimum wage makes less money than a full-time worker on the 1975 federal minimum wage. That’s the official 50 years of “standing still.
What changed, and what didn’t?
Not all the economy was a paradise in 1975. The blistering inflation of the time, the escalating joblessness, and the oil shock had shaken the world to its core. Yet, the wage structure of that time was a product of a lessening relationship between worker pay and gains in productivity that has since been lost. After the mid-1940s, productivity growth grew in tandem with typical workers’ compensation rates, until around 1973. After 1973, they diverged. The economy continued to expand. The gains were transferred to other sources.
The true tale of this list is that of this divergence. These jobs did not lose value, it’s that they came to be considered less valuable. A construction worker is still working on the construction of this building. Child is still being taught by a teacher. The freight is still transported via a truck. No change to the work. The pay of that work has been redistributed and it continues to be felt by the workers of these jobs.
Productivity has increased since 1975, but the ordinary workers’ wage rate, estimated by researchers at the Economic Policy Institute, would be about double what it is now. Double. Not a policy proposal, that’s a policy statement. That’s simply some maths with 50 years of data.
It is not the question of which of the jobs paid more in 1975. That is why we didn’t think anymore that this was something we were going to solve.
This article was written using AI, and edited and paraphrased for clarity and accuracy.
