It's odd, don't you think, that an "artisan" of some kind, with a "specialist" product, would only make about 10% more per annum, adjusted for inflation, than a generalist churning out a staple food by hand?

Modern bakers are competing in a market dominated by extremely cheap mass production. The economy of scale has moved out of the local bakery and into the regional bread factory.

People are willing to pay double or triple for artisanal bread compared with mass produced bread. But are they willing to pay 10-20x? If not, and the extreme cost efficiency of modern food factories inexorably lowers prices, the market clearing price of artisanal bread is limited and declining.

Ex-Baker by Trade here. yes even the little shops are effectively mass production factories. Buy the ingredients in big pre-mixed sacks. add the right temp water and yeast into a big mixer and press go. drop that into a machine that cuts the right mass chunks out and shapes it ready for production line style dropping into tins and mounting in the proofer then into the oven.

Typically they only have one actual baker, a few apprentices and often just unskilled laborers.

actual "Artisan" bakeries are very rare and not terribly profitable unless in highly affluent areas.

Propose an alternative comparison for a simple job that does not require a degree and has existed for a hundred years, and tell us - are the results are different?

Any tradesman job that's existed that long? We could keep it related even - bricklayer, basically exactly the same job (..on a large site cement might be made elsewhere and delivered for you, or on site the mixer might be electric).

I expect that most "bakers" in the US today work for grocery chains (or maybe for manufacturers of packaged bread and pastry products--not sure how precisely the category is defined). They're probably mostly not working for artisan specialty bakeries although I wouldn't be shocked if people at those places weren't exactly raking it in either.

I don't think those large industrial bakeries really have 'bakers'? They have automation engineers, food scientists, mechanics.

No, those people are the specialists that come in and set things up, or design and build the machinery that gets set up.

The day-to-day work is done by bakers, and much of it is not automated.

It's a factory job though, their employer 'competes' for them with the other nearby factories, not the nearby independent bakeries.

As I say. I don't know who is counted. In any case, I certainly imagine grocery chains that bake on-premise have "bakers" and there are more of them in that type of job than working in high-end artisan bakeries.

Just wanted to say I've enjoyed this HN rabbithole gold, where we've gone from talking about increasing house costs to discussing the role of bakers in modern day industrial bakeries :)

It is just a point of comparison. You can ignore it and focus on inflation and dollar purchasing power for consumer goods, also included. Point being that house construction costs have grown on a different trajectory than dollar value and salary.

yes that occupation has changed considerably in the last 100 years. A "baker" today is usually the person who opens Krispy Kreme in the morning. 1914 was a decade and half before sliced bread was even invented!

These days, bread is made very efficiently in massive plants (which is why it costs only $0.93 a loaf at my grocer)