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You seem to be confused about the point people are making. The point is that from about 1945 until around 2000 in the USA there really wasn't such a thing as "a

You seem to be confused about the point people are making. The point is that from about 1945 until around 2000 in the USA there really wasn't such a thing as "a job that doesn't pay enough to live on". People owned houses and cars by working at grocery stores. A single income from any white collar job supported a stay-at-home spouse. Teenagers bought cars by working part time. College kids paid their tuition and living expenses for the full year by working summers. That today's below-poverty-line job still leaves someone better off than being completely destitute is beside the point.

Aurornis 15d ago
I understand that argument, but what does it have to do with the unemployment rate? You seem to be confused about the point I'm making, which is that low-paying jobs drive people to take on more employment, not less.
- danaris 15d ago
  But "employment" is tracked as a binary, not as a "number of jobs someone is working". So if person A takes 3 jobs just to get by, there are fewer jobs left for person B. (Not quite 2 jobs less, because it's not perfectly zero-sum, but generally at least 1 job less.) So while I certainly wouldn't make the claim strongly, as I don't have any data, it would at least make sense for the lack of living-wage jobs to increase unemployment rates.
boxed 15d ago
You're just cherry-picking though. Things were massively different in 1945 in tons of ways. For example Jim Crow was still active for one. Food prices were MASSIVELY higher for another.
ryandrake 15d ago
I think this is a rosy view of (at least) the 1980s-1990s. There were definitely jobs that paid way below what it cost to live, and there were plenty of people who needed to take a second or third job to survive. It just wasn't the norm like today.
- wat10000 15d ago
  According to this, around 6% of workers had multiple jobs in the 90s, versus 5% or a bit above today: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 Frankly, the biggest reason for these sentiments is straight up false nostalgia. The 90s wasn't some utopia. There were plenty of shit jobs. People struggled. Notice how none of the positive vibes are backed up by numbers. It's just "people owned houses and cars by working at grocery stores." No mention of how many people managed to pull that off or how it compares to today. It's just a vague feel-good statement that The Past Was Better.
  - alyeska2 15d ago
    I didn't back up my statements with numbers because I'm old enough to have lived through the times I'm talking about and it's as obvious how much things have changed in my lifetime, but here: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/median-house-prices-vs-income-us/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/median-house-prices-vs-inco... shows houses have gone from 3.5x median income to 6x median income since 1985. Or here's a source that makes the comparisons via number of hours worked, showing that people today need to work thousands of hours more than Boomers did to afford the same things: https://dailycaller.com/2026/08/29/life-mainstays-college-housing-childcare-higher-costs-generation-z-zoomer-baby-boomer-bc-game-study/ https://dailycaller.com/2026/08/29/life-mainstays-college-ho... Or here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/bf5814b4262c498fb73303b30f4d9734 https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/bf5814b4262c498fb73303b... showing that college tuition has gone from 8% of household income in 1968 to 20% in 2020. The 90s wasn't a utopia, but also, look at the media landscape of the time as a reflection on society - Fight Club, Office Space and American Beauty were reflections on the unfulfilling banality of life being too easy to find purpose. Married with Children (1987) and The Simpsons (1989) center on men who are supposed to be relatable-losers in low status, low paid dead end jobs (shoe salesman and power plant worker) and yet both have two story houses and are supporting multiple kids, because that was just normal and relatable to the blue collar average Americans watching the show at the time. Rocky (1976) has a protagonist who owns a house in Philadelphia despite being "poor", if it were filmed today they'd have to make him sleeping in his car for the character to represent the same level of desperation that audiences understood him to be in at the time.
runako 15d ago
> from about 1945 until around 2000 in the USA there really wasn't such a thing as "a job that doesn't pay enough to live on". Also, this is flatly wrong in that the wage laws were crafted specifically to enforce certain jobs not paying enough to live on. In particular, US labor & minimum-wage laws have exemptions for the types of labor which was commonly associated with disfavored groups. As a result, those jobs have been poorly paid ~forever. Example jobs: agriculture, food service, hospitality, personal care.
- Izkata 13d ago
  Minimum wage was first established in the US in 1938, so I'm not so sure they're wrong. Almost sounds more like you're confirming what they said, since it's barely been adjusted with inflation.

Aurornis 15d ago

I understand that argument, but what does it have to do with the unemployment rate? You seem to be confused about the point I'm making, which is that low-paying jobs drive people to take on more employment, not less.

danaris 15d ago
But "employment" is tracked as a binary, not as a "number of jobs someone is working". So if person A takes 3 jobs just to get by, there are fewer jobs left for person B. (Not quite 2 jobs less, because it's not perfectly zero-sum, but generally at least 1 job less.) So while I certainly wouldn't make the claim strongly, as I don't have any data, it would at least make sense for the lack of living-wage jobs to increase unemployment rates.

boxed 15d ago

You're just cherry-picking though. Things were massively different in 1945 in tons of ways. For example Jim Crow was still active for one. Food prices were MASSIVELY higher for another.

ryandrake 15d ago

I think this is a rosy view of (at least) the 1980s-1990s. There were definitely jobs that paid way below what it cost to live, and there were plenty of people who needed to take a second or third job to survive. It just wasn't the norm like today.

wat10000 15d ago
According to this, around 6% of workers had multiple jobs in the 90s, versus 5% or a bit above today: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 Frankly, the biggest reason for these sentiments is straight up false nostalgia. The 90s wasn't some utopia. There were plenty of shit jobs. People struggled. Notice how none of the positive vibes are backed up by numbers. It's just "people owned houses and cars by working at grocery stores." No mention of how many people managed to pull that off or how it compares to today. It's just a vague feel-good statement that The Past Was Better.
- alyeska2 15d ago
  I didn't back up my statements with numbers because I'm old enough to have lived through the times I'm talking about and it's as obvious how much things have changed in my lifetime, but here: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/median-house-prices-vs-income-us/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/median-house-prices-vs-inco... shows houses have gone from 3.5x median income to 6x median income since 1985. Or here's a source that makes the comparisons via number of hours worked, showing that people today need to work thousands of hours more than Boomers did to afford the same things: https://dailycaller.com/2026/08/29/life-mainstays-college-housing-childcare-higher-costs-generation-z-zoomer-baby-boomer-bc-game-study/ https://dailycaller.com/2026/08/29/life-mainstays-college-ho... Or here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/bf5814b4262c498fb73303b30f4d9734 https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/bf5814b4262c498fb73303b... showing that college tuition has gone from 8% of household income in 1968 to 20% in 2020. The 90s wasn't a utopia, but also, look at the media landscape of the time as a reflection on society - Fight Club, Office Space and American Beauty were reflections on the unfulfilling banality of life being too easy to find purpose. Married with Children (1987) and The Simpsons (1989) center on men who are supposed to be relatable-losers in low status, low paid dead end jobs (shoe salesman and power plant worker) and yet both have two story houses and are supporting multiple kids, because that was just normal and relatable to the blue collar average Americans watching the show at the time. Rocky (1976) has a protagonist who owns a house in Philadelphia despite being "poor", if it were filmed today they'd have to make him sleeping in his car for the character to represent the same level of desperation that audiences understood him to be in at the time.

runako 15d ago

> from about 1945 until around 2000 in the USA there really wasn't such a thing as "a job that doesn't pay enough to live on". Also, this is flatly wrong in that the wage laws were crafted specifically to enforce certain jobs not paying enough to live on. In particular, US labor & minimum-wage laws have exemptions for the types of labor which was commonly associated with disfavored groups. As a result, those jobs have been poorly paid ~forever. Example jobs: agriculture, food service, hospitality, personal care.

Izkata 13d ago
Minimum wage was first established in the US in 1938, so I'm not so sure they're wrong. Almost sounds more like you're confirming what they said, since it's barely been adjusted with inflation.