A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
Our Goals
Found on imgur https://imgur.io/gallery/gqItf8e
To save people from having to squint at the small text; top chart is measured in seconds, bottom chart is measured in days.
Hero!
Thanks. I didn't even bother, knowing that would frustrate me
This infographic has a very big and obvious flaw: wages are not the only cost of a company.
If a company covers its wages costs in 1 day it doesn't mean that it's pocketing the remaining 363.
Instead of revenue, they should use wages+profit. This way we can see which companies take what part of the generated value for themselves.
That "flaw" you pointed out is the point of the infographic. It is literally just to visualize the proportion of revenue paid to employees. No one is saying that the rest of the revenue is straight up profit, I cannot even imagine how you came to that conclusion.
The revenue vs profit aspect is also difficult to measure. An example as to why is Amazon claimed it made no profit for years, because it reinvested all of the revenue it gained in addition to revenue that paid for operating costs. Are you going to believe Amazon's claim? Most people would argue they did profit, and that reinvestment is still profiting, but that's not how things are often measured.
Well, one could argue that since this community is called "work reform", the point of this infographic is to make workers aware of how much more companies would pay them. This infographic does not accomplish that.
If your company buys a chair for 1000€ and you sell it for 1001€, the company got a revenue of 1001€. You cannot ask more than 1€ to be paid to you for it though, since the company would be losing money. That's what is called a profit margin.
This infographic shows companies from a wide range of sectors, and a wide range of profit margins as if they were comparable. You cannot compare the wage/revenue ratio of a supermarket to a tech company, since they operate at different profit margins.
You can compare wage/(profit+wage) ratio though, as it measures which part of the pie goes to the workers and which to the company, and that is universal.
It is true that it's hard to measure "profit", but that fact doesn't make this infographic any better.
Even profit is manipulated and funnelled back into "growth".
Revenue? Profit? EBITDA? Without a definition for what "make" means, this is useless, and verges on propaganda.
Says right at the top of the chart. The 3 data points are 2022 revenue, revenue per second, and average salary.
My fault for not being able to read teeny tiny gray text on a white background, I guess.
Anyway, comparing revenue to worker compensation isn't really very useful. Payroll comes out of that revenue, as does every other cost of doing business. Compare payroll to profit, or to executive compensation, if you want to make a point. Yeah, worker compensation sucks, but just comparing it to "the biggest number we could find" doesn't mean anything.
Also these numbers are going to be higher for bigger operations.
I checked for Walmart. It is revenue.
It's revenue not profit but anyway...
Fun fact from this is The Home Depot receives revenue of an average worker's salary in roughly 3 bars of "The Home Depot Song"
I don't think it says profit anywhere? It says 2022 revenue in the legend for the companies, and the annual personal salary is revenue too because it needs to be spent on living expenses.
Conflating "to make money" with "revenue" instead of profit is the iffy part for me... I apologize for not being clear about that.
At the risk of entering pedant territory, the idea of "making" the money is by doing something that would cause a person to pay more than before. If acquiring the "before" and the act of adding value incur costs, then to me, the "money made" is the revenue less those costs.
That's fine? Payroll is an expense, it does come out of revenue. Profit is what's left over after they pay everyone else.
Please see my reply to the other commenter, my issue is with "making money" being conflated with revenue.
I tried this for Twitter and got a divide by zero error.
The platonic ideal corporation would be an entity that has no employees, extracts rent from everything, has no expenses, produces no products, and pays no taxes.
This platonic ideal is a parasitic organization that serves no purpose, but we've structured our entire economy around the endless pursuit of it in all sectors.
Look at all those healthcare companies. Fifty years ago, such a list might have a Big Pharma company, but no patient care portals at all (hospitals, pharmacies, etc). Now they dominate the whole list.
And it's also worth noting that several of these are also huge players in the opioid crisis, including the four who settled to avoid state lawsuits that would have gutted them (looking at you Cencora, McKesson, Johnson&Johnson, and Cardinal Health).
Hey, maybe you would know… why are pharmacies/pharmacists being sued for the opioid crisis? I could understand suing pharmacies back in the day when pharmacists were able to dispense meds without a Dr’s Rx, but when Congress stripped pharmacists of basically all power except strictly following a written script in the early 80s as part of the war on drugs, it seems like modern pharmacies have two options with an opioid Rx. Do their jobs and fill it, or do their jobs and don’t fill it. And the filling it job seems like the more responsible choice. I am a lawyer and I really don’t understand the theory of recovery and I enjoy talking about it more than reading up on it. Is it just that the pharmacies have deep pockets?
deleted by creator
The first source listed is the infographic's creator's website... Only a little sus. 😅🤷🏼♂️
Original source (yes, it has more pixels):
https://llcattorney.com/business-info/us-companies-salaries-vs-revenue
My man!
would be more interesting to see how much more could those companies pay their employees if their profit was evenly distributed among them
Would need to make sure to exclude costs like executive "compensation", stock buy backs, or any other methods used to artificially decrease profits to avoid taxes.
Stock buybacks don't reduce profit for the company. They are not accounted as an expense that offsets income. Investors pay capital gains tax instead of income tax that they would pay on an equivalent dividend, which is probably what you are thinking of.
Net revenue, gross profit, operating income, EBITDA, and (net) profit are some well understood measures that take various things into account. E.g. net revenue subtracts the cost of inventory, but it doesn't subtract wages, so it's probably a good starting point for a discussion on redistributing earnings among workers.
Since most or even all of them are publicly traded companies it isn't that difficult to find out.
Walmart had a net income of 14 billion, they have roughly 2.1 million employees, that leaves each employee with an additional 6.6k for this year or roughly an additional 550 a month.
Doesn't sound a lot but that can be done without impacting any other business practices. And for some of the employees overseas that might be doubling their salaries.
$550 per month is a lot for those making the least. Also about $3.17/hr.
Considering a large portion of Walmart workers receive food stamps and other benefits due to low income, it would be a huge boost for those folks and lessen demand for assistance on local govts…but nah let’s keep all the money to pay for our drunk driving murder nights.
It really depends on how much it costs them to do business. Payroll is only a part of the cost to do business. Companies like Walmart have massive real estate holdings which likely take a significant chunk of their revenue to pay off.
Not to mention the small matter of cost of goods sold
i hate jpeg compression
Here you go, the original sauce: https://llcattorney.com/business-info/us-companies-salaries-vs-revenue
Thats more then jpeg compression right there
I'm having a hard time with the realities of this. How much time should a corporation take to earn the salary of the average employee? What percent of a company's yearly profits would be appropriate to be spent on salaries? Many of the companies are exceeding 1/12. Is that enough? If not, what is?
I know I'll probably be on the wrong side of things (again), but I didn't find this graphic stirring. Is there a number out there that people find acceptable?
Profits aren't spent on salaries. Salaries one of the things deducted from revenue to determine profits.
I seriously doubt that these are profits. These are revenue.
Even if we compare it to profits the time frame just switch to minutes. Walmart made a net profit after taxes of 14 billion. That translates to 26k per minute.