Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How much did you make at your first real job?

In the late 70's I worked on a farm in the summers for $2 per hour.

My first real job out of college was in a CPA firm's office with an annual salary of $16,500. Second year was 18,000.

May first real job was at a filling station in Garnett Kansas. 1982
Started at $3.35 per hour
Pumping gas,fixing flat tire,changing oil,tune ups,etc

4.30 washing dishes

$6.00 per hour working on a dairy farm.

Other than mowing grass and shoveling snow, not at the same time, and working at a Boy Scout camp and an NC State University entomologist. My first real job was with the Asheville Police Dept. making 16,900 per year in 1990. It went up significantly from there with raises, extra duty and secondary employment but you had to be willing to work.

$1.65/hr.......... boss was a cheap ass (my dad)

I think it was $1.85 in 1974 welding camping trailer frames.

Appears to be a rather broad definition to "first real job" here.

Yep, I've thought about it Ed and honestly don't know what I'd call my first real job.


$5/hr back when we were kids.
(lucky if you get paid)

$4.55 hourly in 1979 started my now 43 year career with Houston Lighting & Power, due to retire in August, this year.

$5.05

At a little Italian restaurant. Got me through three years of highschool and four years of college.

-Jake

I had 2 paper routes. Weekdays & Sat on the way to school and then Sunday. Sunday was a big route. Gave my dad a cut for riding me around. Can't remember what I actually made. Started a business selling worms around the same time. Can't remember what I made there either. First time I ever received a paycheck is when I started working in a custom molding/cabinet shop at 14. That was $3.00 an hour in 1985.

Other than bailing hay or walking beans I started working in a tire shop for $1.25 an hour in October 1969.

kwg

$1.60 per hour with .15 raises every 3 months for 5 years then a bump with journey men card.

1.35 per hour I think , went to work in a rock quarry. Worked for couple weeks and somebody ratted me out , told the owner I was 16 and he had to let me go for insurance reasons .
Told me to come back when I turned 18 .
Then got a job at chicken plant making 1.65 with all the crazy azz women I could handle .
Worked there on summer months .
Kenneth

I will go make leather shoes from a local cobbler shop. then sell them out to the students in school. Making a sum of $50 on each pair.

$4.75 washing dishes and being a cook's assistant in a cafeteria when I was in high school.

Baling hay, hoeing fields, and detasseling were better money, but none were a steady income.

Minimum wage at Kroger, I think it was 4.75 back then. But on a good saturday you'd make 100-120 in tips.

Bailing hay, shoveling cow [bleep] and milking cows for $1 an hour plus 3 meals a day. My folks should have supplemented the pay since grocery bills at home dropped big time. One of the largest dairy farms in the county at the time. We milked 120 head twice a day, I got to grab 480 teats every morning and every evening.

$40,000 per year straight out of engineering school working for a general contractor as an assistant project manager. Many of my buddies went to work for DOT making 35k which I thought was too low, given construction was wide open in the early 2000s. Economy went to crap so in 2012 I left to go to DOT. I’d have 20+ years in with 30 required for full benefits if I had just followed my buddies. Such is life