The term “prevailing wage,” which sounds like “minimum wage” or “living wage,” connotes the difference between paying enough to scrape by and enough to afford a middle-class living.
Example : Not so. Prevailing wages and benefits are set via an elaborate, 92-page formal schedule detailing 71 different job classifications (a “sign painter” is different from a “striper painter,” which is distinct from a “painter”).

That sign painter gets $57.20 in wages and benefits per hour. Multiply that by 40 hour work weeks, then by 46 weeks a year (assuming six weeks without work, beyond the built-in vacation), and you get $105,248, before any overtime.

Painters on structural steel get $88.33 in wages and benefits per hour, which amounts to $162,527 per year using the same formula. Paperhangers, plasterers, plumbers and others, something similar.
Read more – https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-edit-prevailing-wage-20190324-44dy3fipabbf5grl7mgfqdg2fq-story.html