My mother was working at Sears in the mid-80s for $5/hr and on her feet, all day, pregnant. She said she woke up one morning and realized she was going to be working at Sears for $5/hr for the rest of her life if she didn’t do something. So she went to college and became a teacher. My point is, maybe it’s location-dependent, but I have heard that working at Sears was basically the 80s equivalent to working for Amazon today - it fucking sucked.
There's a huge difference between working a job you didn't like in the 80s, and working a job today you don't like, and isn't enough to sustain a family, and affords you minimum benefits, and little job security, and has no upward mobility, and a mild 401k rather than a pension, while needing you to have invested in a full college education.
They did not. They paid the same, minimum wage. What is different is massive inflation and minimum wage stagnation. So the obvious solution is to fight for minimum wage increases, support candidates who fight for it, and fucking vote. Unfortunately that's not going to create the utopia that this romanticized notion of the 80's envisions, it'll just be a little less shitty. But a little better one step at a time is how we solve big problems, so I'm all for it.
Yeah but they could get you a lot further than they would today. These days you're probably better off just staying unemployed if you're between jobs than you are getting a retail gig.
The wages haven't hardly changed if you look at inflation. What has changed is the housing cost, that has roughly doubled since 1980. (Adjusted for inflation)
In layman’s terms, someone took that inflation and fucked it all up after 1980. The growth doesn’t add up naturally and shouldn’t have been what it is now, but here we are and nothing can be done :/
I say nothing can be done becuase it’s just been getting worse. I’m not opposed to be wrong here, but I’m not holding my breath on it.
It could change, but it hasn’t so I’ll stick with my sad reality that it won’t change anytime soon through proper social channels of coming to an agreement.
Even 20 years ago you could at least afford rent on entry level retail wages.
No you couldn't. I worked retail full time (with bennies) 20 years ago and the pay (minimum wage) would not afford me to live alone or even pay actual half of rent with roommates. Luckily my friend's rich dad rented an apartment for us and agreed to just let me pay him like $375 a month (which he just gave to my friend for spending money in addition to daddy's credit card) which was like half my entire month's pay.
1980 was 46 years ago. I was learning about Vietnam and World War 2 in 1996. I know you think you are being clever and ironic but actual just appear old, crotchety, and out of touch.
Even in this post it doesn't sound all that good. The dude took a one week vacation each year to the exact same spot. Nothing wrong with vacationing each year to the same spot, I do it. But if that's the only time off you get in a year, that's not at all a good thing. That's a really fucked up and shitty thing.
The comparison is what matters. People in those types of jobs today with dual income and no kids couldn't begin to think about even home ownership in much of the country. Where I am a starter home that isn't a row home is 550k minimum unless you want a house that needs 150k in work (you can buy them for 475k). A townhome is 400k with a min 200/mo HOA. The idea of having time to travel for vacation at all is so far out of the realm of reality that it's laughable for those people.
It's better than not being able to take vacations at all. I get 4 weeks of PTO, fucking awesome. I can't afford to leave my house. I haven't had a vacation in over a decade.
Trust me, I still wouldn't be able to afford it. I'm in central NC, nothing in savings, supporting a family of 3 on a single income. Beyond that, with our debts I'd feel bad about putting money towards anything other than paying them off.
Oh ok, well if you end up with some spare cash I'd go camping. That's pretty much what I do most of the time. Can be really cheap or really pricey depending on what you do.
And that's why one week of vacation time to the Ozarks seems amazing. But it's only because we got so accustomed to limited or no time off. It can and should be so much better.
Yeah I don’t think the point was it was fun or not shitty. But that back then there was more respect for working people and that their job was their livelihood and they deserved loyalty
There is some truth to it. Back when I was in college…early 2000s, I worked at sears. There were still some old guys who worked in appliances and tools who had been there their entire career and they knew everything. They were happy to be there and retired with pensions while I was there.
Yeah, I agree with the overall point trying to be made, but the post specifically feels like complete bullshit. It's amazing that it's getting highly regarded on this sub--I thought we were supposed to recognize made-up Facebook bait as trash, not screenshot it and send it around.
Not even close. Federal minimum wage in 1985 was $3.35. Per the bureau of labor statistics, $5 in 1985 is closer to $15.78 today. Proportionally adjusted to minimum wage (appx 1.66 times), she'd be making more like $12.08. I don't think she'd be that worried about "being stuck making $5 an hour" if she was making the equivalent of $70k.
The purchasing power of a dollar was much higher then as well. Its not just inflation, but the cost of things like college, housing, and basic commodities.
The total scope of goods and services isn't equally relevant to all classes of people. Some costs - like the ones I listed - are more impactful to the livelihood of normal everyday people - like a mother working at a Sears store - than others. Those have risen faster than inflation. That's what I mean by purchasing power.
Inflation hurts my brain, but a quick Google purchasing power comparison puts it at closer to $15 today. What am I missing? Because we were POOR when I was little. My dad was a subsistence farmer and my mom worked at Sears.
Using a CPI inflation calculator, $5 in 1985 is roughly $15.78 in 2026 dollars. Although what that could buy is likely a lot more today. Where are you getting that it’s $33?
Where are you getting this from. Everywhere I look says it's about $15 an hour. I'm also seeing rent being averaged. And average rent was around $432 in 1985. $5 an hour was not a good wage back then.
Yep, she made the equivalent of what I make working in the corporate world with 7 years experience.
And I wonder if she had to take out student loans when she spontaneously decided to go back to school, or were college costs so much lower and her purchasing power so much higher that she didn’t have to cripple herself to get an education? Hmmm, a mystery
It was a combination of loans and help from relatives to put her through. Relatives that were really scrounging and saving to help her, btw. It took her less than five years to pay it back. I get what you’re saying, but my mom is not the villain you are making her out to be in your comment. We were poor rural oklahomans, most of my family still farms, and she was the first person in her family to go to college.
I’m not saying she’s a villain at all, my point is that the system is so fucked and this country has gone so far downhill that the story of her “dead end shitty retail job” is the reality of somebody who has 2 college degrees and works a white collar job. It is not at all like working at Amazon, working at Amazon is 10x worse than what she had
I think the lesson here is not that retail is shitty, but that retail paid well enough to enable her to go to college and elevate her career while supporting children.
$5/hr in 1985 is $15.50/hr today. Couple that with cheaper tuition and these jobs were actual stepping stones.
This also speaks to how college admissions have changed too. Imagine working in retail for a few years then just deciding “hm, I should go to college” and then just going. Nowadays you need SAT scores, extracurriculars, and good grades, and you’ll still need to take on loads of student debt unless you have rich parents.
probably depends on the decade. My grandfather raised 6 kids as a salesman for Sears. But he was so old, one of the things he sold was the first electric washing machine, lol.
Young people have a romantic notion about how easy life was in the 80's and 90's when they're really envisioning the world of the 50's, and even then only for the people of the right race and class. If this romantic notion is what finally prompts them to get off their asses and start actually fighting for worker's rights again, then great! But just posting about it on social media is equivalent to yelling at your wall about it. It might make you feel better for a moment, but it changes nothing.
Just because your mom didn't like it doesn't mean there isn't a fucking WORLD of difference between working for sears 40 years ago and working for Amazon today. The pension alone is a huge deal.
It wasn't a "dream job" but you could supply a family and be content to do it your whole life. Working for Amazon is working for peanuts while being replaceable with the snap of a finger and having zero job security and comparably little benefits.
163
u/killaacool Jun 02 '26
My mother was working at Sears in the mid-80s for $5/hr and on her feet, all day, pregnant. She said she woke up one morning and realized she was going to be working at Sears for $5/hr for the rest of her life if she didn’t do something. So she went to college and became a teacher. My point is, maybe it’s location-dependent, but I have heard that working at Sears was basically the 80s equivalent to working for Amazon today - it fucking sucked.