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The Job Ads: A Blast From the Past

Somebody must be trying to tell me something. Maybe the cosmos are conspiring against me.

Over the last few weeks, oddly enough since I arrived in the United States to visit family, I’ve been receiving random emails about job openings. I’m not looking for a job. I’m retired, and I’m quite happy doing what I want, whether that means going to the gym, having a meal or coffee at one of my favorite places, or taking a nap. My wife isn’t particularly fond of that last activity, but retirement has its privileges.

The jobs being advertised are mostly the usual hourly positions: clerks, checkout operators, delivery workers, and similar jobs. I have no idea why these emails started arriving, although I suspect some algorithm has figured out that I’m back in the United States. I wasn’t searching for work. Somehow, the technology found me anyway.

That got me thinking about the early 1980s, when I was just starting my working life. Back then, earning $20 an hour would have sounded pretty impressive. In my mind, that was the kind of money that could help you buy a house, drive a nice car, take a vacation, and build a comfortable life.

I did a pretty big job and lifestyle comparison in this post:

THE AMERICAN DREAM Three Generations · Four Decades Each · One Question

Of course, gas was around 50 cents a gallon, and the cost of just about everything was different. You can’t compare wages across four decades without considering inflation and the cost of living. Still, it’s striking to see a wage that once would have seemed like serious money advertised today for jobs that may not even cover the basic expenses of supporting a family.

I remember a time when getting a job meant looking through the newspaper classifieds, circling possibilities with a pen, and picking up the telephone to make a call. You had to put yourself out there. Now, an algorithm can apparently decide you might be interested in delivering packages or working a checkout counter without you lifting a finger.

The world has changed in ways I never could have imagined when I started working. Some of those changes are remarkable. Others leave you wondering how we got here.

And here I am, happily retired, minding my own business, when a random email arrives to remind me what work used to mean, what a dollar used to buy, and how much the definition of a comfortable life has changed.

I wasn’t looking for a job, but somehow I got a little history lesson anyway.

Have you ever looked back at what you earned early in your career and wondered how that money could buy so much more, at least in your memory, than it seems to today?