Just remembered that one of my nieces and her husband own a plumbing business in Ohio, so I checked with her regarding salaries, etc.
Recently they started paying new workers $18 an hour, those with 3 years experience $28 dollars an hour and master plumbers $40 an hour.
They usually send out 2 men on each job and bill at $200 per hour total.
Don't know what they earn from the business (which they were lucky to have inherited from his father) but . . .
Aside from 4 business trucks, he buys a new monster truck every 2-3 years, she buys a new SUV every 2-3 years and they bought a couple of years ago a high end Mustang. They also have large boat and large travel trailer and very nice house.
He goes on fishing trips to Florida and hunting trips to the north every year.
She travel almost every other month to distant states to visit relatives.
They have adult children who do not work in the business; don't know exactly why.
Owning the business and not lying around in some awkward position doing the actual plumbing work is no doubt a better position to be in. Aside from taxes and costs I would guess that they are making more money then those they employ per hour.
It all varies, my guess is that it is probably easier to make money in plumbing in the US than it is the UK. Partly due to less competition coming forth than you would be set against and partly as 2tallbill allured to that the tax regime/society is different. At its worst here a lot of local council's are going near bankrupt and are having to have the government bail them out. The reason? Money has been provided over the past 20-30 for the Social Housing crowd to be housed for free and have many kids on benefit on what could be an unlimited number of kids. Now the government only pays child benefit on the first two children a couple have. It's really the housing that counts though, if you have children, particularly if a single mother you go to the top of the housing ladder for free social housing (unless you work then you will pay for your social housing but it's still cheaper than the going rate by up to a third but it's why many of the social crowd don't work). So it all means the social housing crowd has been expanding in the UK exponentially. The kids produced all expect the same mostly, to live if the state and so the Councils financial on the social housing it provides burden grows &
grows.
There's also another issue to it all which is that genetically those in social housing tend to be the worst. Sometimes there are good news stories of someone who has made it good but mostly they are fucked up from the get go by just having a poor accumulation of not particularly helpful genes. Add to that bad to non existent upbringing from parents and often drug problems and the country gets burdened down by a whole load of useless people that would possibly only ever be any good in a forced labour camp.
So paying for all that costs a lot both at local and national government level. That of course means that everyone else has to pay, way, way more tax so surpressing take home pay after tax.