[PapaBear3625]

From the article: For a helper, it was about $25 an hour, for a master who could run a complete job, it was about $45 an hour.

So that $45 is for the master carpenter who runs the job, with helpers getting $25, which is what I think has been reduced to $11.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Yet elsewhere the author wrote “the construction industry in California once offered a starting wage of about $45 an hour in the late 1980s”

No way in hell that was true.