Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What did you make when you started your first job out of college or high school?

I started my plumbing apprenticeship on June 30, 1971. I was making 50% of journeyman’s wages which was 6.20, so I was making 3.10 which works out to 6500.00 per year.

What were you making when you got out of high school or college? I’m talking first real job, not high school.

I was clearing 98.46 a week if I made 40 hours. I got married in December. She and I about starved to death until got 2nd year pay. It went to 4.50 an hour.

$36 a month from US Navy.Not bad considering free food,clothes and all the bullchit you could handle.

About $800 per month.

Wearing a badge and gun no less.

Started on the family farm at $500 a month plus an old farm house. I still had to pay all utilities including oil heat. When the wind blew so did the curtains.

Not much E-3 pay

$4.55 hourly in 1979, guaranteed 40 hour work week. Retiring August 2020

$28k a year as a 2ndLT in the Marine Corps in 1991

I think that it was $3.61 an hour at the packing plant, but I can't be sure. When I started teaching, it was $8550 per year.

If you broke it down to hourly and the amount of hours worked a week, I think I would have owed the government!

$27K a year in '89 as a Systems Engineer

I thought it was all the money in the world

now I wish I was a 2nd LT in the Marine Corp!

Salaried, $9500 per year in 1973, right out of college, and I worked about 60 hours a week. No OT pay.

Looks like it was $814.20 That is $407.10 before takes per pay period.

$407.10 divided by 160 hours would be $2.54 an hour! But don't forget I still have to give back my share to Uncle Sam!

$15,120 as an Ensign in 1987 + $50 a month flight pay so $15,720 total a year. I was single, lived on Perdido Key within an easy walk to the Floribama , had a sports car and flew jets for a living.

It's been downhill since then.

You worked 160 hours per pay period?? Did you walk uphill 5 miles both ways to school in the snow also? 😁

$814.20 divided by 160 hours is roughly $5.08 per hour....you were making twice as much as you thought you were. 😂

First real job was $7/hour in high school in Alaska then $2.10 in high school in Oregon. The good chit was building pole barn trusses at $2.30 per at about 19. Been upward ever since. LOL

Working for the US Government in 1985 for $14,390, with a Masters Degree no less!

A 160 hour work period is on the light side actually. If you knew anything about 30 plus year old CH53D's and the man hours required to keep them up at a 85% mission capable level you would no my facts are correct! But nice try!!!! No I didn't walk up hill to school it was a relatively flat walk, though it did snow often in the winter. I always preferred bumper skiing to walking.

That would have been 1969 and I made 2.00/hour plus room and board building power line.

About 37k

I made $1.65 an hour with a tar and gravel roofing company at my first job out of high school in 1968. Gave up that glorious job to make $78 a month in the Army as an E-1.