Factory foremen once made more than computer programmers in America

 

Factory foremen once made more than computer programmers in America

Factory foremen were high earners in 1980

We thought a lot this year about the economy through the lens of the election: Why were voters so unhappy? Yes, inflation had spiked for a period, but many economic measures seemed positive, like a low unemployment rate.

We ultimately created our own metric — one that measures the status people hold in the economy relative to everyone else, and how that status has changed. One surprising finding: In 1980, front-line production supervisors (essentially factory foremen) made more on average than computer programmers. That’s obviously not true anymore. One of those jobs has evolved in complexity, pay and prestige; the other has been squeezed by automation and globalization. No wonder factory workers might feel unmoored.

We learned this while analyzing census microdata. But we were so startled by the comparison that we went back to the source to check it: The document above is a 1980 census publication showing the average income of production supervisors in the heyday of American manufacturing. — Emily Badger, Robert Gebeloff and Aatish Bhatia