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<p>I completely agree: obviously there is no simple causal relationship between high profits and high employee pay. Employee pay is largely determined by power. The economists would say that management/capital has greater bargaining power over labor because the high unemployment rate constrains the freedom of labor to switch jobs. The sociologists would say that management/capital has won the battle over intra-organizational political power. The psychologists would surely emphasize the lack of confidence and empowerment that labor feels. But no matter which social science you choose to invoke, it all comes down to power. </p>
<p>But that all serves to illustrate my central point: ** the corporate sector is not your friend**. They’re not really trying to help you. The gains generated by the corporate sector are determined by market forces, but how those gains are distributed amongst the stakeholders of the corporation is determined by power. Anytime that the corporate sector becomes powerful - such as right now - they’re going to claim the bulk of the gains for themselves and stick labor with the dregs. This is not the behavior of friends. </p>
<p>As kb10 said: “once u get to your 40s, 50s. it’s not easy to just get up and goto a different company. if u can’t move around, all of this talk becomes moot because they have no say in the matter, it’s keep the job or unemployment.” I agree - which demonstrates that as you become older, less mobile, and less able to switch jobs, the corporate sector will use those life circumstances against you. They will relegate you to a worse deal because they know that you lack bargaining power. Obviously that’s not how friends behave. I don’t try to screw over my friends whenever they’re weak. I don’t think anybody does. </p>
<p>So now that we’ve clearly established that the corporate sector is not your friend, that then - returning to the original impetus of this thread - begs the question of why exactly working for the regular corporate sector is so desirable in the first place. What’s so great about working for a company who you know will try not to pay its employees well whenever they can get away with it, even when they’re making record profits? </p>
<p>Given that, I think we can all understand why many of the graduates from the top schools do not really want to work for the regular corporate sector, instead preferring other careers, such as consulting, banking, startups, medicine, law, etc. The banks paid record bonuses this year. The regular corporate sector could afford to do the same, but chose not to. That in a nutshell demonstrates why people don’t really want to work for the regular corporate sector.</p>
<p>And that captures the limitations of the WSJ study that inspired this thread. The study investigated which schools are viewed the most positively by recruiters (mostly) from the regular corporate sector. But that simply begs the question of whether working for that sector is really such a desirable goal in the first place, especially given the profit-hoarding behavior of that sector over the last year.</p>