Notes on the Structure of Wages

N EITHER wage rates nor hourly earnings represent the price of labor that is, the amount which the employer pays for a given amount and kind of service or the amount which employees receive for doing a given kind of work under given conditions.' Consequently, it is not surprising that there are large variations both in the rates paid by different plants within the same locality for jobs nominally at least within the same occupation, and in the hourly earnings of employees doing apparently similar work in different plants. A good illustration of the spread of rates within an occupation in a city is given by the hiring rates for common labor paid by 85 plants in Cleveland. In February I947, these rates were as follows:2