Agreed. There are pilot jobs in the US that pay great and offer a very desirable lifestyle. However, these jobs account for what, 30-40% of US pilot jobs? The rest are fighting for scraps making $50-60k/year while paying back $100k+ in student loans and never seeing their homes. There’s a reason the FO on Colgan 3407 commuted from her parents home on the other side of the country and the CA slept in the break room the night before the trip started. They didn’t make squat and couldn’t afford anything else.

Quick reminder: "slave wages" are exactly $0, and also you can't leave the job due to threat of violence. (And also there's a lot of violence anyway, and also bad housing and bad food and complete lack of personal time or space or privacy or any freedom of choice, etc.)

It sounds like regional airline pilots may have surprisingly low wages given how highly-skilled their jobs are. "Low wages" is a good term for this.

It isn’t slavery, indeed, but waged can get lower than low. Pilots can be pressurized in accepting very low wages for the right to fly an airplane.

Reason? Pilots have to make flight hours in the plane they’re licensed for to keep their license.

So, you are, say, $100,000 in debt to get a license to fly a 737, and you need a few hours in it this month to keep that license. Renting said plane for a few hours is very expensive. That makes an $0 an hour ‘job’ flying for a few hours look mightily attractive.

"Slave wages" relates to wage slavery, not regular 18th century America slavery. Slave wages are so low they barely let you survive, and give you no way for saving up - essentially enslaving you in the regular sense, with threats of violence being fulfilled by the economy at large, instead of the employer.