Monday’s Labor Day ad is another one from the United Brewers Industrial Foundation, again from 1939. This was well before the “Beer Belongs” series, and just before World War II. An unseen figure, the disembodied personification of the beer industry, holds a beer tray in his hand with “Employment” emblazoned on the side. On the tray are brewers, bartenders, executives, farmers, and a host of related occupations. I wonder how they come up with that figure. The Beer Institute puts today’s beer-related job count at only slightly more than twice that number: 2,015,120. And at that time there were less than 1,000 breweries who’d reopened after prohibition ended, and most were fairly large by today’s standards. And while there are probably fewer bars today, retail has most likely grown. But regardless of the actual number, then as now, there’s a lot of labor in the beer business.
