General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhen was your first actual job and how much did you make?
And how much would it be in today's dollars?
You can find out what your pay would have been here.
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
For me it was 1969 and I made $4.00 an hour which would be $25.37 today.
CountAllVotes
(20,878 posts)1975 and wow did it ever suck!
Going nowhere fast and I knew it.
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)17.39 Big drop from yours!
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)It was killer in the early 70's..
Jenoch
(7,720 posts)Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Thanks..
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)DonViejo
(60,536 posts)while working at a "Big Boy" restaurant in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. Current buying power is $9.51
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Not bad for a 15 year old really.
DonViejo
(60,536 posts)Thanks, btw.
Morning Dew
(6,539 posts)$1.80 at KFC.
Equals $9.44 today.
DonViejo
(60,536 posts)and it was worth $9.51
randome
(34,845 posts)shanti
(21,675 posts)i made about $1.50 an hour at my first job in 1972, carl's jr.
bottomofthehill
(8,346 posts)it was the big time because the minimum wage was 3.35 so I thought I was doing pretty good
9.35 today
CincyDem
(6,385 posts)Lugnut
(9,791 posts)That's worth $3.89 today.
lpbk2713
(42,766 posts)Receiving clerk at a plumbing and electrical supplier.
Iggo
(47,565 posts)At some point it was $2.65/hr, but I think that was after I got a raise (or more correctly, the minimum wage went up.)
So, $9.46 today.
JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)d_r
(6,907 posts)1986, $3.35 per hour, $7.11 per hour today.
rustydog
(9,186 posts)then those dangnabbed "illegals" came in and took my high-paying great benefits job...wait a minute...No they took a back breaking, hard labor outdoor work with absolutely NO BENEFITS from a teen who found a better job.
panader0
(25,816 posts)didn't make 10 bucks a bin though. Perhaps the "flats" we filled were smaller, but IIRC, I got 2 or 2.50 each.
About the same time too, outside Eugene, Oregon. I sure was regular.
rustydog
(9,186 posts)I believe I mixed up my apple picking with cherry picking revenues! I picked Apples and Cherries in the Selah valley.
Orrex
(63,224 posts)For $2.13, I believe. In today's dollars that's a sweet $4.61 per hour. Cash money!
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Got paid by how many I sold, I usually came home with four or five dollars for an afternoon.
This would have been 66 or 67 or so.
RebelOne
(30,947 posts)as a meat wrapper in a local supermarket. Today, I would think it would equal 10 cents an hour.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Better than minimum wage today.
sorefeet
(1,241 posts)after about 3 months I got a 5 cent raise. Pumped the gas, washed every windshield by hand and ask each customer if they would like their oil checked. 17 dumber than shit and diggin life.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)stevenleser
(32,886 posts)TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)FreeState
(10,580 posts)LiberalEsto
(22,845 posts)at the stationery store back in 1967.
pampango
(24,692 posts)Jenoch
(7,720 posts)in 1976 for temporary farm work as a young teenager. I was paid $1.80 which is $7.36 in today's money. When I got my first check I wondered who FICA was and how come he took some of my money.
trackfan
(3,650 posts)$10.71/hr in today's dollars.
KansDem
(28,498 posts)Started in 1976 at $3.01 an hour ($12.31 an hour in 2013)
I left in 1979 at $4.27 an hour ($13.69 an hour in 2013)
I had no credit cards or checking account (paid everything in cash or cashier's check).
I shared a one-bedroom apartment ($150 a month; we both paid $75). Utilities were included in the rent. I believe the only expense we had each month was the telephone.
I drove a 1969 VW and did most of the tuneups and repair work myself.
At one point I had over a $1,000 in the hospital's credit union!
And this was in San Diego, CA!
DrDan
(20,411 posts)GoCubsGo
(32,088 posts)The job I took right out of grad school in 1987 started at just over $20K, which is around $42 K in today's dollars, supposedly. It took me a dozen years to actually get to that $42K, thanks to shitty and non-existent raises, and that was with a promotion. The real sad thing is, the current starting pay for that position is just over $25K. Such are the joys of a "right to work" state.
My first actual job paid about $2/hr in 1978, which is just over $7/hr now. I'm seeing positions in my field now that are only paying $10-$12/hr, and require a BS degree. No doubt they have hundreds of kids applying for the handful of them that there are.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)I've never made a whole lot more in constant dollars than I did on my first job although I've made quite a bit more in floating dollars.
madokie
(51,076 posts)I was paid 65 cents an hour. Driving nails behind drywall hangers.
The next summer I got 85 cents and hour, same job
The next summer I went to work in a gas station making 50 bucks a week. 6 day 10 to 12 hour days.
The next summer I still worked at the gas station making 70 bucks a week, same 10 to 12 hour days. Bought my first new car that summer, 67 Plymouth belvedere 2, 2 door hard top. Paid $2267.00 for it. Right off the show room floor.
September that year I went into the navy, winding up in country vietnam where I spent 15 months before I was honorably discharged in oct. '70 after serving 37 months and one day. Early out due to nixons starting to bring us home. I was in the first plane load of GI coming home in that program.
olddots
(10,237 posts)thanks for this thread because I always think about minimum wage and gas prices/cost of living to get a perspective of how things have
progressed or devolved into our current state of depression .
Morning Dew
(6,539 posts)for the $1.80 an hour I earned when I started driving, I could buy 6 gallon of 30 cent gas... someone making minimum wage today would get two gallons for an hour of work.
Pretty sad.
Xithras
(16,191 posts)I remember my HS counselor being floored when she realized that I was making more money hourly than she was. $30 an hour in 1989, or $56 an hour in todays dollars. Of course, I only worked 8-10 hours a week, but that was still a solid paycheck for a 16 year old kid. I was a computer geek before that sort of thing was popular, but NOBODY bothered me about it because they knew what I was taking home.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)I was considerably older though and like you wasn't always getting a lot of hours. They only called me when all else failed..
Xithras
(16,191 posts)My mother is a lawyer, and when I was in junior high I started writing her a PIM/case file manager for her office. There were commercial packages out there that did the same thing, but all had five-digit price tags and required assistance from triple-digit hourly consultants for setup and support. Mine worked well enough that it was quickly adopted by all of the other lawyers in her office, and by my sophomore year in high school it was being used by most of the lawyers she knew (somewhere around a quarter of the lawyers in our hometown). My age and lack of business acumen kept me from marketing it more widely, but my mom (being a mom) was always thrilled to show it off and generated tons of clients.
Most of my clients didn't pay a dime for the software, but they paid me $30 an hour whenever they needed help. There were enough of them calling that I'd have at least one billable hour every day from at least one of them.
It was a pretty good gig for a teenager. Looking back on it, I personally think the software was horrendous, but computers were still a new thing for most people in the late 80's and most people didn't know any better. My clients generally just liked the fact that it worked, it did what it needed to, and it was dirt cheap compared to the commercial competition. I just liked the fact that I was the only computer geek in high school who could get a date
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)I knew a guy in the mid to late 90's that was still writing custom DOS applications for various businesses, he was doing pretty well. I bought VB for DOS back in the late 80's and had written an app for home inspectors and another one to estimate the performance characteristics of electric model planes, he helped me market them and I had a modest income from those for a while until technology superseded my rather primitive efforts.
Xithras
(16,191 posts)My parents had this thing about me owning performance cars. I actually had a 1971 Camaro with a factory straight 6 under the hood. It was pretty to look at, but was mellow enough to keep my parents from freaking out.
FWIW, a big reason why so many programmers were successful from the late 80's to the late 90's were the vast numbers of software niches that were just waiting for someone to exploit. Because there was no competition and buyers were too new enough to computers to lack any real expectations, software didn't have to be particularly good...it just had to work and be fairly easy to use. A LOT of low-skill VB programmers used to make a healthy living writing barely passable software to support these market niches.
It's a whole different game today. Businesses now have expectations as to the quality of their software, virtually all of the profitable niches have established players, and modern support requirements don't fit well with the "one guy in his back room" paradigm. I knew a LOT of programmers who never grasped that change and rode the old model to the poorhouse. Very few of them still program today.
liberal N proud
(60,344 posts)I made $3.80/hr bagging groceries in 1976, today that would be $15.55.
What is minimum wage? $8.75 in some states.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)KurtNYC
(14,549 posts)and it took 10 hours so that's $1.20 / hour.
ChazII
(6,206 posts)in 1980 was for $10,500.00 and according to this site has the same buying power as $29,661.61.
nessa
(317 posts)and honestly I think the job is worth closer to $2.00 than $8.00...maybe right in the middle at $5.00. I was 15.
Cleita
(75,480 posts)I got 35 cents a box. It took me two hours to pick one box because the bushes are thorny and the farmer wouldn't allow us to use gloves. The experienced braceros whom we worked alongside back then could pick a box in half an hour. Even with speed picking it didn't amount to minimum wage which was 90 cents an hour back then. I don't know what it would be in today's dollars but a guess would be $5 a box. We also got FICA deducted from our checks. I averaged $5 a week, which back then to me was a fortune.
ceile
(8,692 posts)Now $7.26. My how far we've come....geez.
Paulie
(8,462 posts)Worth $7.98
Populist_Prole
(5,364 posts)$3.10/Hr then. $9.94 today.
First "real job" ( in my present career field ) was $11.84/Hr in 1985. $25.61/Hr by today's standards. That's an excellent starting wage in my field...almost unheard of. Yeah, we've lost ground.
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)Capt. Obvious
(9,002 posts)now it would be $4.51 / hr
FSogol
(45,526 posts)forthemiddle
(1,382 posts)McDonalds. According to the tool that would be $6.81 an hour now, so under min wage.
kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)ChoppinBroccoli
(3,784 posts)By the time I was a Junior in college, in 1993, I got a summer job in a lumber yard paying $5.00 an hour, and I was excited about the big bucks I was making.
polly7
(20,582 posts)It was so much fun that getting paid was a bonus. I think I earned about 3.00 an hour.
librechik
(30,676 posts)I lived quite comfortably on that, since my 1 bedroom apartment rent was just $55/month.
sinkingfeeling
(51,473 posts)First full-time job as a key-punch operator for the State of Ohio paid $107 a week.
90 cents an hour. $6.27 now. It was at a theater as snack bar worker. Made popcorn and sold candy and pop.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)dionysus
(26,467 posts)loyalsister
(13,390 posts).
XemaSab
(60,212 posts)$14.00 an hour, which would be $18.00 an hour today.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)2013: Public high school teacher, $23,000.
Edited to add: that would be almost $27K today, more than I'm making now. Isn't that just great.
*sighs*
Bennyboy
(10,440 posts)$ according to this http://www.dof.ca.gov/HTML/FS_DATA/STAT-ABS/documents/D23.pdf 2 dollars an hour. I thought it was $1.65 but I could be wrong there.
May of 1974 I worked for family off and on after High School (June of 73 grad) and didn't really have a job like before that...
They made fiberglass products, mostly grommets for bombs. Baja Buggie bodies and the very beginning of the hot tub industry.
My friends all worked there so I applied. fresh out of school and deciding i gotta have a job.
I was in my interview and a foreman told the boss that (Whateverhisnamewasdidn'tcare) quit. the boss turns to me as says "can you drive a forklift?" I had driven plenty of them working as teenager for my Dad's shop so I relied "yeah" and he hired me on the spot. "take these to here, these to here, come back and do it all over again" was what he said and off I went. Stacks of boxes of finished grommets. from the line to the loading dock. Every trip I made there was a guy giving me the evil eye,the evilest of evil eyes. His job was to wipe the grommets, fresh from being glassed, and hanging from a rack. The absolute shittiest job ever IMO (that assumption would prove to be incorrect a week or so later).
I did that for a week and everyone of us went to Reno to see the Grateful Dead. Everyone at the plant and all of the Fair Oaks hippie crew. (that story is right here: https://www.facebook.com/notes/ben-baity/reno-1974/383356354123)
When I came back on Monday (the show was Sunday) I saw the guy that I thought had the shittiest job ever in the boss's office. I clocked in, (still kinda high from the show after sleeping in the lot with everyone that night so we wouldn't miss work) and the Boss called me over and told me that do0o0o0d, was gonna start driving the forklift (he had been there for 11 years, wiping grommets). He told me to go over to the OD machine. the aptly named OD machine.
The big slab of grommets that the guy wiped for 11 years moved down the line,got cut into ten pieces, put on a conveyor and I put them on this wheel, pushed a button, and the Outer Diameter was sanded (OD). I took it off and put it on the line to go the next stop (and you already know this right) was the ID machine which did the same thing. (yes, inside diameter).
Sounds easy huh? Well it was like Lucy in the candy shop. They kept coming, and try as I might, i could not possibly keep up. No fucking way. the other OD operator couldn't either and we kept stopping the line, but that didn't stop nothing......
I worked until lunch and my friends were all "The OD machine, that's too bad" and saying that was the worst job ever (and right they were... I was thinking "grommet wiper" was looking pretty good to me then).. I go back to the OD machine after lunch and here they come again, more freaking grommets. All of a sudden I notice the station across from me is vacant. The other guy, without telling me anything, just up and goes to the bathroom. I gotta cover his grommets and I can't keep up with my own. I am freaking out thinking the entire shop is going to collapse because of the huge stack of grommets I have backlogged. I was Freaking out.
The guy came back, I dropped my gloves and walked out. That'll show em, fuck this.
Went to get my check on payday and they didn't even know I left.
raccoon
(31,119 posts)littlewolf
(3,813 posts)Ilsa
(61,698 posts)closeupready
(29,503 posts)AngryAmish
(25,704 posts)$20-45 dollars per loop. started in 1981
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)After college (1973), I started at $10,000 per year as a Junior Engineer with the City of New York
Skidmore
(37,364 posts)my 17 year old self thought I was making a fortune. It was 1971 and today that job would pull in $10.06 per that calculator.
pnwmom
(108,994 posts)That would be $4.50 today. I hear that babysitters do a lot better these days.
laundry_queen
(8,646 posts)I did that too, for $2/hr in 1988 (around there anyway), which is $3.94 in today's dollars. If there were more kids sometimes I would get $2.50 or even $3/hr (when there were 6 kids total). My daughters, who have just started babysitting, generally get $10/hr.
pnwmom
(108,994 posts)So now some babysitters get more than minimum wage.
Good.
laundry_queen
(8,646 posts)$10/hr is close to minimum wage where I am.
I think this is more of a supply and demand thing in my area anyway. So many kids in my area don't have to babysit to get money anymore (wealthy parents), so there are less babysitters. I've had people swarm me when they find out my girls can babysit. People throw their number at me, and my kids don't even have any babysitting courses. When I was a teen, I had to get multiple babysitting courses, first aid, etc. I had to advertise...and I was GOOD so I got a lot of jobs word-of-mouth and I still had a harder time getting jobs than my kids do, lol. I even told my kids *I* was going to start babysitting in the evenings and weekends to earn my tuition money, LOL!
Hekate
(90,793 posts)I don't know why my mother thought that I, the oldest child in our family, needed to "undercut the market to get the job" but the rest of the neighborhood surely benefitted from her lack-of-self-esteem lessons.
When a neighbor asked me what my daughter would charge for babysitting (when she looked of sitter-age) I said that I assumed she would charge whatever the rest of the girls did, but that I did not know exactly what that was any more.
Yes, sitters do a whole lot better these days.
MineralMan
(146,329 posts)$1.25/hr. I was 16. I did that for two years, 5-8AM, five days a week, and 8 hours on Saturday. Good money for a high school kid at the time, and didn't interfere with school or afternoons.
Fla Dem
(23,741 posts)Did clerical work for a major insurance company. But then we got free lunches and they were good 3 course lunches.
bamacrat
(3,867 posts)laundry_queen
(8,646 posts)I was 14 and it was a busgirl job. $4.00/hr which is the same as $7.12/hr right now. I did get a percentage of the waitresses' tips though.
Quantess
(27,630 posts)That would be $6.86 in 2013
marlakay
(11,491 posts)I was 17 working at dry cleaners folding sheets for motels in napa which was quiet then before tourists came in the 80's.
It said my money would be worth $13.11 now. Which means minimum wage then got you more than it does now.
Aristus
(66,462 posts)I don't remember how much I made, but it relieved me of dependence on my parents for everything but housing. And since I got up early every morning without fail to deliver my papers, I didn't have a curfew, either.
Hekate
(90,793 posts)I'm pretty sure the Dole cannery was unionized, but as I was party of the flood of seasonal summer help it was never part of any discussion I had.
Sales clerked my way through college; piss-poor wages.
sylvi
(813 posts)That was considered high as a lot of farmers were only paying $8.
I wonder if they pay more than that to undocumented workers today.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)So probably not much more if not less.
aikoaiko
(34,183 posts)11.36 in todays coin. It was good money for a 17-year old and a thirsty 1969 Le Mans.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)SoCalDem
(103,856 posts)and yes.. she took taxes/SS/FICA out..
Blue_In_AK
(46,436 posts)equal to $2600+ now. I doubt seriously if kids today just out of HS are making that kind of cash in a summer job.
HeiressofBickworth
(2,682 posts)receptionist in a real estate office -- 8 hrs Saturdays and 4 hours Sundays. I don't recall how much I made. Records indicate I made a grand and munificent total of $1,571 taxable dollars in 1964 but I worked part-time half the year and then took a full-time job after that. The education I received at the real estate office was worth even more.
I worked in a real estate office during a time when real estate offices were being accused of colluding to keep black families from purchasing properties in white neighborhoods (and this was in the Seattle area). The office I worked at was cited by the NAACP as one of those offices. It, of course, made the local TV news when the black test-couple reported on their experiences with the office. The office was a neighborhood office, right next to the community pool. One Saturday, a nice car drove into the parking lot and two well dressed black people came into the office. I welcomed them and went to the back room where the salesmen were congregated over coffee. The back door was standing open and there was no one around. I went back into the reception area, told the couple that there didn't appear to be any sales people in the office at the moment but there were a number of open houses in the area they could visit. I gave them a brochure and a map of the neighborhood showing the open houses. The man smiled at me and said he understood what just happened. He said he appreciated my help. I was 17 and had a mouth. When the couple left and the salesmen returned, I gave them a piece of my mind. I'm still amazed I wasn't fired for telling them what I thought of what they were doing. I nearly lost my job one time because my mother's best friend (a real estate agent) sold a house in this white neighborhood to a black family. They were furious but had no where to vent but on me. My mother intervened and I wasn't fired. I remember a debate at my school early in 1964 between the Seattle Real Estate Board and the NAACP regarding open housing. It was an interesting time.
Blue_In_AK
(46,436 posts)with a pension from MEBA after 25 years at sea as a marine engineer. Of course, it's a fixed monthly amount, but if it had kept up with inflation according to that calculator, he'd be making about $1700/month more. We're not complaining, though; we're more than happy to have it. Union thugs all the way.
LeftInTX
(25,551 posts)It was totally entry level. I had some computer classes in college. I basically designed spread sheets. Kinda like making a bunch of Excel spreadsheets. All I did was make sure the headings and columns looked nice and that everything added up.
And then I wrote programs that transferred personnel data from tape to disc.
It was a pretty mundane job. The people were extremely rude and worked very hard to get each other fired. The job was non-union.
TheKentuckian
(25,029 posts)onethatcares
(16,184 posts)under the Whitner store in Reading PA. 1.65/hr
Go Vols
(5,902 posts)one place and pumping gas at another in mid '70's.Made $2.65/10.68 now at both I think.
Was 14 and in High School.Before that I hauled hay for 2 cents a bail from the field to the barn.
1-Old-Man
(2,667 posts)$40 a week, rain or shine. Shit boys and girls, I was walking in tall cotton with that kind of money. My first union job, just a couple of years later, only paid $1.73 an hour as I recall, but it also had some benefits.
Bigmack
(8,020 posts)stocked, ran the cash register, and sold stuff at a hardware store. Not a relative's store.
.50 an hour. That's $4.14 an hour today.
Oh... and fumesucker....thanks for making me feel older than mud!
warrior1
(12,325 posts)KDO at FTB in California.
kdmorris
(5,649 posts)Made 3.85 an hour, which is 9.00 an hour today.
That was just my way of buying the "in" jeans instead of the "regular" jeans that my parents provided us each year.
DCBob
(24,689 posts)Last edited Tue Apr 23, 2013, 07:08 AM - Edit history (2)
plus a free lunch and a homemade dill pickle! The best dill pickles I have ever had.
Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)-- Addressing envelopes for junk mail. In today's dollars: $2.28/hr (35 cents per hour back then -- I was 12)
-- Cleaning pinsetting machines in a bowing alley: $3.25/hr (50 cents per hour -- I was 14)
-- My first decent job was in college. Tech in a geochronology lab: $14/h today ($2.85 at the time)