I’ve been focusing on WPA and related work since 2008. This year, for no particular reason, I’ve been focusing on sales and advertising after completely ignoring the subject for 72 years.
Got curious about the connection. WPA definitely employed white-collar workers who had been discarded along with the skilled laborers when Wall Street bombed America down to bedrock. The projects for writers and actors and historians were famous and highly productive. What about salesmen? Did WPA use them to persuade local governments and businesses to work with the agency?
This 1937 report and this 1938 report include some hints but no definite statements.
Salesmen are listed among the white-collar types who were employed.
Along with the art and drama and writers projects, the report details librarians who created traveling libraries (often on pack-mules), mapmakers and surveyors who drew thousands of maps, and file clerks who organized documents for WPA itself and for local agencies. No mention of sales and persuasion in the projects.
Employment by agencies gives a good picture of the overall pattern. The vast majority were unskilled workers and skilled craftsmen engaged in building roads and schools.
The smaller agencies included the Treasury, who must have been giving jobs to auditors and accountants:
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How well did WPA pay? Hourly wages averaged 50 cents an hour, which inflates to $10 an hour now. Better than the current minimum wage!
Monthly wages ranged from $50 to $90 depending on skill and local cost of living. On a yearly basis, $600 to $1100. Median income in 1940 was $1000.
Polistra's Mill 