That may be how your families shop was run, but your experience is not representative of the industry at wide which uses various schemes to staff their shops from straight hourly, tipped, rented, etc.

Source: I like to get to know my barber's and every shop was run different.

You say barber and I say salon so I wonder if that’s part of the difference. I tend to go higher end places where women are the main customers. I know my stylists too and it’s almost always either been rent a chair and a few W2. Also my experience was a collection of talking to every stylist that ever worked in our salon and that’s a lot because churn is high. But I’d not be surprised if what you’re saying is also true. I have no idea how the chains are ran for example (Supercuts, etc)