So as many of you know hundreds of thousands of German POWs where sent to America to ride out the rest of their war. Many of those POWs opted to work largely for American farmers, but also there are instances of them working for other businesses.
My Uncle who remembers the German POWs on his family farm said his dad (my Great Grandpa) paid each German POW $2 per day.
However I read in another sources the German POWs earned 45 cents an hour. Which say for a 10 hour day would be $4.50.
Yet I read another source that said German POW salaries where capped at .80 cents per day.
So what is the answer? Or did it just depend?
I tried searching, and well I did find posts about German POWs, I couldn't find anything about how much they where paid.
So, your great-grandfather wouldn't be paying the POWs directly. He would be paying the US government market rate for the labor, and then the US government would be in turn paying the POWs their rate which was set by international treaties regarding the treatment of POWs, and varied depending on the work and other circumstances. This was because while valuable labor, it was undesirable that POW labor undercut wages for other workers. This meant that while a contractor of POW labor was paying a variable amount depending on the current going rate, the POW made $0.80. The US government in turn made a $100m profit from the difference over the course of the conflict.
For expansion on this, I discuss pay scales directly in this older answer, but this one and this one also might be of interest.