When viewing the price makeup of a pair of $100 athletic shoes (see illustration below), one can see that while the retailers and other parties get 88% of the cost of the shoe, the manufacturers receive only 12%, of which only 2% is profit, while the individual employees receive only 0.4% of the end price of the shoes. To make matters worse, some of these manufacturers pay new employees an "apprentice wage" which is below the regular rate, claiming that the employees need several months to learn the job. In most cases, however, the employees receive a few hours of training, and then are put out on the assembly line, stitching together Nike's products right along with the rest of the employees. Thus the "apprentice wage" becomes another cost-cutting strategy for manufacturers (Sweatshops- A Menace to Society).