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

From about 13-16 I cut yards around the neighborhood for $2 per.

In high school during the summer, (‘66, ‘67, ‘68) worked as a “lot boy” at a car dealership, detailing used cars, sweeping, starting all the cars in the morning, delivering and picking up cars and basically being the gopher, making minimum wage which was $1.10 an hour.

In NROTC we got books, tuition and a $50/mo. stipend. Had to do three, six week summer training sessions (two cruises and a combined aviation/USMC indoc) where we were paid E-5 pay I think, or about $275/mo.

IIRC, in ‘72 as a newly commissioned, married Ensign with flight pay it was just under $8000 gross for the year. I think our first apartment we rented in Pensacola was $125/mo. With just the two of us we felt pretty well off. 😊

First job in HS as sophomore making $2.25 per hour bagging groceries.
Of course, before that I’d been bucking hay, driving a tractor and chasing cows for the old man for free room and board since about the age of 8. 🤠

Minimum wage....$1.60/hr.! Married with a kid on the way! memtb

1.65 hr in 1973 after high school in a textile mill. Been a machinist since 76. Retiring Dec 31 at 65.

Hi cruzer, you may have known my Dad. He ran the show for Fluor in Iran from 1964 until after the Shah fell. His initials were TJR. I graduated from the Tehran American School and worked summers in Abadan and Bandur Mashur. Small world.


mike r

About $34,000/yr when I started back in 1981.

25K per year as a chemist, supplemented with substitute teaching and national guard duty until I got a raise by becoming a teacher. My wife and I both worked and paid for daycare until I went active duty and made more than both of us combined, with better benefits. She stayed home and raised the kids after that.

Old70

$8,500 per year in 1976 washing dirty laundry. Thought I was in tall cotton a year later when I got a 10% raise to $9,300 per year. And the company paid 100% of benefits cost !

Less than $10K as a 2LT in 1977.

Jimmy Carter didn't pay much and most of our equipment was worn out. My platoon anti-tank weapons were M-40 106mm Recoilless rifles that would probably have bounced off the Soviet T-62s that were on the other side of the Fulda Gap. Ronald Reagan got us paid a little better and we got TOWs to replace the M-40s.

$1.65 an hour working during high school, 1973 or 74. Maybe $2.25 an hour in 1975.

I netted around $270/mo as a PV1.

$77.00 per month plus 3 hots and a bunk!

$134 a month as an E1 in 1971.

$7.05 per hour as an apprentice machinist in 1985.

5.00 a day.

$22,000.00 yr in 1999

Self employed in 1963. Not much.

$1.25/hr driving the tractor/raking hay, USDA cattle research station, I was 16 at the time, later $1.85/hr State Park Life Guard....................

After high school 12-15K..... wife didn't marry for money!

I think we all know a couple of guys here that paid their bosses just to let them work for them, and then they make so danged much money they could retire @ 45 and live like the rest of you only wish you could...

About $4.50 at 17yrs old in '89. Cigarettes were .85¢ and gas under a buck though so in today's $$ that would be $25/hr.