[steveBK123]

I'd imagine that the $12/hr grading job at the $17k/year university is almost certainly not paying $48/hr now that they charge $80k/year, or $36/hr inflation adjusted.. if the job even exists. It's probably been efficiencied away into being some grad student TAs problem.

A lot of these pre-00s hourly wage/cost stories are kind of perplexing to me. It's interesting in how clearly they show the relative strength of labor in different eras.

I remember my dad telling me he worked in a record score & lived at home to put himself through college in the 70s. Going to college in the 2000s, this was obviously no longer in any way possible.

This was an era I was making $5/hr working retail myself, against gas that was $1.50/gal & eating off the $1 menu for my meal break.. it wasn't very much.

Looking at data, 30 years before when my dad was working he'd have made at least $2.10/hr against gas of $0.35-0.40/gal or so.

Currently the ratio in our home state would be $14/hr against gas of about $3.50/gal.

[alsodumb]

Just a data point but we hire some undergraduate graders every semester and I think the pay is around $14/hr.