This will show your age. What is the lowest legal wage you ever worked for?

[ThomWV]

I recall working for a $1.73 per hour. The year was 1966 and I was a mechanic working in a factory setting that rebuilt jet engines (T-56) under contract to the Air Force. It was a union job.

On Edit: I know I had jobs before that that paid less, but I can't remember the particulars of them.

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. 1.60 an hour

in 1970 at KMart.

[customerserviceguy]

7. Same wage

but was washing dishes at a nursing home while in high school.

Being paid minimum wage is your boss's way of saying, "I'd pay you even less, if I could get away with it!"

[Retrograde]

33. same, plus a few sub-minimum ones

babysitting, of course, and a brief stint working for a neighbor who needed extra help at her tiny shop at Easter. Do you know it is possible to have too much chocolate :) ?

[proud2BlibKansan]

48. I babysat for 10 cents per kid an hour

I loved it when the family of 8 kids hired me LOL

[Liberal_in_LA]

84. Inflation conversion: $1.60 in 1970 = $8.46 in 2007

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

[mitchum]

93. Same here in 1973 as a13 year old bellboy in a really sleazy hotel

It made me the man I am today

[raccoon]

172. Same here, 1967 in a textile mill. nt

[The Straight Story]

2. $3.35/hr or maybe 3.25, been awhile :)

But as I mentioned in another thread my friend is making $1.75/hr today.

[OneGrassRoot]

82. That's what came to mind for me. :) n/t

[LooseWilly]

94. Yup, $3.35 an hour at McD in '86

Hmm, come to think of it though, I made about the same one day in '97 driving a taxi in Oakland CA. At least I never lost money on the job though... so I guess I've been kind of financially lucky...

[wartrace]

3. I think it was 2.65/hr at Burger king. n/t

[Donnachaidh]

4. 4.15 an hour

It was in a shipyard in Maine. I was a trainee pipefitter.

[Mojorabbit]

21. Somewhere in the same ballpark

in the early 70's as a registered nurse and it was good money back then too.

[Donnachaidh]

30. yeah it was back then.

I even had a car dealer who wanted to sell me a brand spanking new screaming yellow CHEVETTE because of my *hefty* wage LOL! Just out of school then, too.

[GreenPartyVoter]

97. About the same, also in Maine, and working for a jelly kitchen. :^)

[WhiteTara]

5. $.90 per hour as an insurance secretary

they wouldn't let me be an agent either...the glass ceiling was very low in my youth.

[Jennicut]

6. Um, like $8.00 at a children's camp in the mid 1990's when I was in my late teens

[ThomWV]

9. Was that per day?

[Jennicut]

19. It was per hour a day. But I am from CT and this was in a rich town.

This was an "exclusive" camp for kids of the privileged. The kids were great, the parents very snobby.

[DeepBlueC]

185. what does 'per hour a day' mean?

'Per hour' computes as does 'per day' but 'per hour a day' leaves me bewildered. :hi:

[kimmylavin]

180. Well, I picked the wrong camp!

I worked as a counselor at a camp in New Hampshire one summer.
My salary?
A whopping $75 for the whole month - at a sleep-away camp!

But the kids WERE great. :hi:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. $1.00 per hour. Dishwasher in 1960. And, I got stiffed for a weeks wages.

But, I had the pleasure of seeing my creep boss led away in handcuffs for non-payment of taxes.

[NoPasaran]

27. Is there any better feeling in the world than when bad things happening to bad people?

I remember how happy I was when I read that one of my ex-bosses had been sent to prison!

[izquierdista]

50. Ex-bosses?

One of mine was gunned down in the alley behind his (phen-fen) clinic. He was into all sorts of nefarious schemes and it finally caught up with him. (I was living on the other side of the country at the time).

[mbperrin]

10. $1.25 per hour washing dishes for a wedding caterer in 1966.

Gasoline was 13 cents a gallon, movies were a quarter, Cokes were a dime, burgers were 7/$1. I actually saved enough to pay cash for my first car, a 1956 Ford Fairlane with the 292 Thunderbird V8, for $400.

Think I'll lie down now, I'm older than I thought......

[LWolf]

11. $1.and some change.

I don't remember how much. It was 1976.

[Mnemosyne]

12. $.25 per hour.

Farmer next door, mid-sixties, approx. 10 years old.

[JerseygirlCT]

13. Does babysitting count?

Then it was .75 an hour, lol.

My first "real" job, out of college, I made a whopping $9700 a year - from which I had to take the money to commute into NYC, plus NYC, NY state and NJ taxes, as well as Federal taxes. (And it was a sucky job even without that embarrassing salary!)

[NoPasaran]

14. $3.35 an hour in the 1980s

Working in a photo store in the back, mixing chemicals and processing film. It sucked enough that one day I went to lunch and never came back.

[TBF]

67. Must have been the minimum - that's what I made too in the 80's.

I was in high school & college in the 80's. Any restaurant or clerk/cashier job paid that. But I had a lot of $1.00/hr babysitting jobs, and it could be anywhere from 1-4 kids at that rate, including light cleaning & cooking. Graduated in '88 and did nanny work, along with shifts at a psychiatric hospital. The hospital paid better because I could get overnight & weekend differentials.

I started working in law firms (paralegal jobs)in 1990. We started at 15,500 (per year) in Washington DC in the private firms; those on the Hill were making $14,500. By the end of the 90's things were much better.

Now we're back in early 80's territory at best.

[etherealtruth]

85. True for me as well, I had to check

Carter raised the minimum wage to 3.35 in '81

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7562.html

[rainbow4321]

157. Looks like $3.35 was the min for the entire 80's

I googled that dollar amount and minimum wage to see just what year it was I made that and found this chart:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0774473.html

For me it was 1981, I believe, when I turned 16 and went to work for McDonald's.

[CountAllVotes]

15. $.01 an envelope

I typed addresses on envelopes for $.01 each. I never got the $10.00 and it took me 7 hours. :(

:dem:

[Waiting For Everyman]

16. $1.25, but apartments rented for $80/mo. then too.

Oh and doctor bills were payable without insurance. Nobody had it then. And they made house calls.

[elifino]

17. $1.10/hr. 1959

I still work for the same company. I work 30 hours/week now from home using my computer.

[ima_sinnic]

18. I think it was $1.15 or so in ~1963 as a "supermarket" cashier, then my boss

announced I was getting a raise of 10 cents an hour. He acted all big about it, like he was a great guy for giving me a raise. Later I found out the minimum wage had been raised and he was FORCED to pay me more.

[TriMera]

I worked for tips as a "Bellman".

It was actually 1989 in Texas. I made $1.70/hr plus tips. The tips were a bad joke. :rofl:

[patrice]

20. $.50 @ hour as an usherette in a movie theater.

Included a sharp little tuxedo, with a bolero jacket and a cumberbun, and a flashlight.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

22. $0.80 but remember that a quart bottle of coke was $0.10

Fixing submersible, hydro-electric pumps. I think I was about 13.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

23. $79 per month as a member of the Marine Crotch.

At the end of 4 very long years, I was making the princely sum of $165. Of course it included luxuries like what passed, occasionally, as food. And, delightful accommodations in rooms with 100 other guys, most of whom snored, farted, and vomited when drunk. Not to mention field trips on rolling ships awash in vomit, followed by tents inhabited by mosquitoes that twisted your arm before removing a pint of blood.

[jody]

24. $1/day for farm work. n/t

[Occam Bandage]

25. $4,000,000/hr. I come from the hyperinflated future.

[earth mom]

26. $2.15 an hour in 1977-serving up ice cream.

:9

[tonysam]

29. Same Hourly Wage, Same Year,

only I worked cleaning motel rooms. Hard, hard work.

[lostnfound]

88. Same wage, but it was 1978 -- at a library.

Loved those books more than ice cream.

[earth mom]

160. Lucky you!

That would have been my dream job-but I was a teenager plus there were no jobs at the our local library anyway because of a lack of funding at the time.

I wanted to be a librarian in the worst way when I was a kid, but all my friends embarrassed me and said it was not cool, so I didn't try to make it a career. :hide:

[acmavm]

28. $1.15 - first job, old folk's home. Absolutely broke my heart every day.

[lumberjack_jeff]

57. When I was 18, I had a girlfriend who was a nurses aid at an old folks' home.

Talking to her made me swear off getting old.

Some promises are harder to keep than others.

[acmavm]

60. A couple incidents still make my eyes get all watery. And that was over

40 years ago.

edit: I just helped get the poor old folks fed and things cleaned up after meals. I had no formal training nor was I an 'aide'. Just a 16-year old with very sensitive feelings.

[Donnachaidh]

102. I worked through HS as a nurse's aide at an old folks home

And there was a woman who was the *dead spit* of my grandmother. They could have been twins, except she was about 3 inches taller. She had had a stroke, and all the nurses at the home said she was *loopy* -- couldn't speak, and supposedly didn't understand anything said to her.

One day, I came into her room and found her sitting in her own urine. It was cold, and the nurses were all in the kitchen playing cards. Not one of them had checked on her. I had to throw a fit to get one of them to help me lift her off the chair, and get her changed. This did not ingratiate me with the nurses, obviously. But I made sure she was clean and snug before I left, and I always talked to her. That day she reached out and GRABBED my hand, and held it in a hard grip for several minutes. She didn't have to speak - I knew she was thanking me. We both got kind of teary then.

The nurses decided to get back at me by making my job miserable. And keeping me away from Pearl. My mother finally forced me to quit, because I was getting so upset with the bullshit. I didn't have a chance to say goodbye to Pearl.

Three months later I read her obituary in the local paper. That whole episode still haunts me at times. I've told my family I'd rather drive my car into a lake than be put in a nursing home. All my experiences working in them makes me wonder about the *compassion* we're supposed to have in this country. They all seemed to be nothing more than dumping grounds for families too busy to deal with the frail and the elderly.

[acmavm]

128. That's exactly what they are in a lot of cases. Those old folks would offer

me money just to sit and talk to them for a while. I couldn't, I had to have everything served, trays taken around, do chores, pick up the trays, and help clean up the mess according to a schedule. And some of these poor people hadn't had a visitor in months. Many months.

**Sigh**

I understand.

[Lugnut]

31. $.50 an hour in 1961.

I worked as a waitress in a local diner over the summer. I wanted to pay for my own class ring which was $28.

[azmouse]

32. $1.25/hr when I was a teenager working at a farmer's market in '77

[madmom]

34. $1 an hour and after taxes for a 40 hour week....well let's say I wasn't driving a rolls.

[SoCalDem]

35. $0.50 an hour..and had FICA deducted too:)

Of course I was 12 years old, and worked for my Aunt in her clothing boutique, but it was still a legal job:)

She wrote me an actual paycheck, and then cashed it for me :) I thought I was hot-stuff:)

When I was 18, I made about 1.25 an hour working for Hallmark cards near Kansas City

[C......N......C]

45. .Duplicate

[azurnoir]

36. $1.65 an hour in 1973

I was 16 years old and I was a nursing assistant in a skilled care nursing home!

[lamp_shade]

37. $1.25/hour in 1965 as a soda jerk in a drugstore.

[Contrary1]

I was a carhop back in the early 60's...

We were guaranteed $5 a shift. A shift was usually 4 to 6 hours. If we didn't make that much in tips,
the owner would kick in the difference.

[SmileyRose]

38. $20 for 32 hrs a month - mid 70's

I was in high school and delivered the door to door store ads. I spent about 8 hours a week stuffing the ads into the plastic bags to hand on doors and walking around to deliver them and trying to collect my 25 cents a month from each homeowner (which was voluntary on their part). I averaged about $20 a month.

At the same time I also worked after school at a mall cafeteria and made $2.00 an hour.

Babysitting in Jr. High paid less.

[adamuu]

39. 4.75 an hour in 1995

[indepat]

40. Don't recall, but remember when father's weekly wage as a factory worker for a giant manufacturer

was $14.00, or $.35 per hour, and that our family of three, then four, lived on that income, not in luxury, but not in want of adequate food, clothing, and shelter. :P

[etherealtruth]

41. $3.35 an hour, coffee shop, ~1980

Became hopelessly addicted to caffeine and am forever grateful I didn't work in a bar :)

[create.peace]

42. $1.40 Carnation Co. at Disneyland 1966 n/t

[JFN1]

43. In 1977 I worked for $1.50 an hour

as a stock boy over the summer at our local grocery store. I was 11 years old.

Of course, I figured out my first year in the Army (1985) I made about $1.73 an hour...but those would be the lowest wages I've ever been paid.

[roseBudd]

44. $1.65 at an ice cream shop

[stevedeshazer]

46. 50 cents a flat for picking strawberries, which for me was about $1/hr.

I was nine years old. 1964.

At sixteen, I worked a temporary job doing garbage and livestock manure pickup at the county fair for $1.50/hr. That was 1971.

[grasswire]

80. remember the smell of warm strawberry fields?

I do.

[stevedeshazer]

116. Yes

I carried my Japanese $3 transistor radio and listened to the Beatles and the Stonesvwhile picking berries and eating about half of them.

Good times!

[C......N......C]

47. .25 hour. legal and authorized.

I worked at a bank after school burning papers in an incinerator and hosed down the sidewalks. Shows up on my SS statement. Made $34 in 1958 when I started and $178 in 1959 when I got more hours and a raise.

[Hekate]

49. $1.00 an hour at Kress, sales clerk, $1.35 pineapple canner, both in high school.

Big step up from 35 cents/hour babysitting. The cannery was probably unionized.

Hekate

[Synicus Maximus]

51. $1.00 per hour

That was standard in the late 50 and early 60s.

[sakabatou]

52. I wasn't paid a wage

I was paid per commission.

[blogslut]

53. $.96/hour

Car hop at a rootbeer & burger drive-in. I made the most tips ever on my last day - $5.00

I can't begin to tell you how many $2-something per hour waitress jobs I had over the years.

[Iggo]

54. I think it was $2.65/hr as a box boy at a liquor store.

1979, Casa De Liquor and Deli, corner of 166th and Norwalk in Cerritos, CA.

[create.peace]

55. here in Kansas still $2.65 for 46 hr week, for small farm and seasonal

"Farmworkers employed on small farms are exempt from both the minimum wage and overtime pay provisions of the FLSA. For the specific regulations on this exemption, click here. Young workers employed on small farms, with parental consent, are also exempt from the child labor provisions of the FLSA. For more information on exemptions from the child labor provisions of the FLSA in agriculture, click the underlined text. Other farmworkers are exempt from the FLSA's overtime provisions. For the specific regulation, click here. "

"Seasonal and recreational establishments: Employees employed by certain seasonal and recreational establishments are exempt from both the minimum wage and overtime pay provisions of the FLSA. To view the applicable regulation, click here. "

http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/screen75.asp

[lumberjack_jeff]

56. $2.65 / hr "haying" (collecting, hauling and stacking bales of hay) n/t

[tsuki]

58. $.10 a paper bag. nt

[MineralMan]

59. $1.25/hr, in 1962, delivering milk at 5 A.M.

[Blue Diadem]

61. $1.90 '72-'73 IIRC. n/t

[TankLV]

62. Fifty cents.

As a kid to work for a neighbor with brute force doing really crappy, tiring, labor intensive things...

[givemebackmycountry]

63. $2.05 an hour - 1974 - American Thermostat Corp in Cairo, New York.

One of my first jobs out of High School.
Sat in front of a drilling machine that would drill holes in 12 small metal pieces simultaneously.
12 pieces on...
12 pieces off...
12 more pieces on again.
All day long, and mind you this was before the days of "walkmans" or IPODS.

First break at 10am - smoke a joint.
Lunch Break at 12pm - drink a beer and smoke another joint.
Afternoon break at 3pm - drink a coke and smoke another joint.

All day, every day.

Mind numbing, soul crushing gig.
But, it was a check and that was a good thing back then.

[Urban Prairie]

64. $0.00 per hr as an independent insurance agent in 1984

Pure commission and I got a desk in a cube with a phone and a phonebook to make cold calls to businesses to sell group health insurance. I made about 200 or so cold calls a day, and did make quite a few appointments, but the insurance was hard to close on because of their strict group heath requirements, such as a limited average of employees/families with pre-existing conditions. I had to use my own car and pay for the gas to get to the appointments. Quit after a year because I just could not make enough money to keep myself in a clean business suit.

[tammywammy]

65. $5.25 when I was sixteen

And that was only for a month before I was promoted into another position and got $6/hr. I was making $9/hr when I was 18 in 1998/1999.

[yella_dawg]

66. I'll really show my age.

75 cents pumping gas and washing windows.

[Kingofalldems]

68. 1.00 per hr.

1964, at a restaurant.

[lpbk2713]

69. .75/hr for bagging groceries.

... and for taking all the crap that tyrant of a store manager could dish out.

[Catbird]

70. $1.00 an hour in a library (1964)

[Stinky The Clown]

71. $1.25 an hour - pumping gas and flirting with girls in cars.

Life was good.

I was young and blissfully stupid.

I **still** have the jacket they gave me to wear. A Texaco jacket cut like a WWII Eisenhower jacket.

[BlooInBloo]

72. Nothing shows your age more than using the phrase "show you age".

:P

[EFerrari]

86. What about, I can't remember?

lol

When I started working, we didn't have money. We had rocks and were glad to have them.

[Sanity Claws]

73. $1.85 around 1973

That was in NY, which had a higher minimum wage than other parts of the country.

[asjr]

74. 1951 -- made .50 an hour typing.

[Kaleva]

75. $1.50 an hour

I thought that was big money back when I was 14 so I would tolerate the heat stroke, frost bite and getting stitches for the bigger cuts I suffered.

[HamdenRice]

76. About $2.40 as a clerk typist for the Environmental Protection Agency

This was the summer of 1976. I may actually have worked for less than that after than, but I'm not sure.

I had worked on my own as a photographer for a funk/soul band in the neighborhood, but my first official job was as a typist.

[Dogmudgeon]

77. Worked for FREE.

I was an insurance agent and my General Agent -- the head of the area -- absconded with $10-20 million dollars, of which maybe $50-100k was mine. I was 25 at the time.

Two years' work building a clientele and a practice, flushed down the toilet, just like that.

--d!

[JVS]

79. Did you hunt him down and kill him?

[Dogmudgeon]

110. The FBI and FTC hunted him down and tried to extradite him

I heard he ended up in Israel when they didn't have extradition for financial crimes, but I'm not certain of the exact details; and I do know that he skipped across a couple of different havens for white-collar criminals. It seems that there is a rather large international "community" of rich nomadic crooks.

I would have had to have taken a number, anyway. I worked in a blue-collar area, and some of my fellow ripped-off agents were were well acquainted with "extra-judicial" methods. I decided to go into medical technology instead.

--d!

[leftofthedial]

78. $1.85/hr.

Plus I got to swim for free when I wasn't working.

[sutz12]

81. $1.25 IIRC

At the public library in Auburn, Washington around 1967.

[Liberal_in_LA]

83. Inflation conversion: $1.73 in 1966 = $10.94 in 2007

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

[ThomWV]

90. Yep, I was walkin' in tall cotton back then, wasn't I?

[joeybee12]

87. I think it was 2.15, a bag boy at the local grocer...

...it might have been 2.35

[MaxPlancker]

89. $2.01/hr. 72? '74? Retail Clerks union. Minimum wage was $1.65.

[JohnnyLib2]

91. .75 an hour at a dime store.

Started at 14.

[quiller4]

92. $1.65/hr when state min was $1.10 n/t

I was a member of the retail clerks local during my senior year in high school when I made $.55/hr more than the state minimum that my girlfriends made working at non-union stores.

[ladywnch]

95. $2.15 an hour at Famous Barr in St. Louis back in 1978 n/t

[RamboLiberal]

96. I started out computer programming at $2.15 an hour at 19

It was I believe .35 an hour above minimum wage at the time. I had just come of tech school after a 1 year course and it was basically to get my foot in the door since at the time the strikes against me were I lacked a degree(it was around the time degrees were becoming a requirement for the job) and I was female. Yes all the programming jobs at the time were advertised as Male Help Wanted.

Well I made a career of it so far and of course make a much better wage though I sacrificed some in salary to stay with small - medium size companies. I'm a bit to much a rebel and lone wolf for the corporation jobs.

[guyton]

163. first computer "job" ...

Was for the universities computer center in exchange for all the computer time I could use ... this was back in the time of mainframes where each cpu minute was billed.

My job was to try and help any/all customers of the mainframe with whatever their problems were. Usually JCL, PL/1 or Fortran problems. Did well enough to get converted to a paid job after a couple of months.

Most people still used punched cards and got their output listing wrapped around their decks with rubber bands. I got really really good at shooting rubber bands accurately a very long way (think "rifling").

[timtom]

98. I remember fifty cents an hour.

[maddezmom]

99. $3.35

:hi:

[latebloomer]

100. This will show MY age!

I can't remember.

[Broken_Hero]

101. 5.15$ nt

[dkf]

165. Yup...me too!

[Career Prole]

103. $2.25 per hour as a stock boy in the local liquor store.

Then I enlisted and if I had divided pay by hours worked I'd have been pained to discover I'd made a step down for the first year or two. :)

On edit: Since you're attempting to divine age from rate of pay I should mention that the minimum wage was $1.60 when I held that job.
The liquor store's owner was a friend of the family because my folks helped put his kids through college.
They weren't philanthropists, per se. Just thirsty. ;)

[JanMichael]

104. $3.35/hr

The minimum wage in 1986.

[SteveG]

105. $1.25 per hour in 1966

That was minimum wage and I worked at a local Woolworth's as a stock boy/custodian

[Are_grits_groceries]

106. $.50 an hour.

I was working on a farm for my uncle. I doubt that was legal, but who was watching??

[hfojvt]

107. it's hard to tell

with my paper-route I made $1 per customer per month. That was towards the end in 1978. When I started in 1975 it was less. The paper was about 312 days per year at about an hour a day, plus about an hour a week for collecting money. About 30 hours a month for $55 per month, more or less. Works out to $1.83 an hour and I think the minimum wage at the time was $3.10.

[Blue_Tires]

108. 4.75 an hour in 1997

[Odin2005]

109. 4.75/hr at a locally-owned diner/ice cream shop in 2000 when I was 14.

[dysfunctional press]

111. i honestly don't remember...although i've never held a job that paid minimum wage...

i've always earned more...even if just by 10-25 cents an hour.

[SammyWinstonJack]

112. 1971 I worked for $1.65/hr. At Winchell's Donuts. It was a crappy job.

[CreekDog]

113. 3.35 in 1987

:hi:

[verdalaven]

114. 3.15 - as the assistant Mng of an ice cream parlor 1980

Hubby's - 2.35 as a floor guard at a roller skating rink, 1975

[yewberry]

115. $2.60-ish an hour, four years ago, waiting tables.

New England has low minimums for tipped employees.

[distantearlywarning]

117. I believe it was $3.35 an hour

Working behind the register at a fast food seafood restaurant. Fun fun fun.

[HooptieWagon]

118. 1.50/hr working at a boatyard after school around 1971.

[JBoy]

119. I caddied for $3.50 a round when I was 13. Took about 5 hours, so that's $0.70/hr.

Tipping was NOT ALLOWED, but I usually got a free coke and maybe a chocolate bar at the 9th hole turn. Slave labour, but it's a great way to learn about golf. I liked caddying for good golfers, hated getting duffers.

One perk though - caddies could play the course for free Monday mornings before 8:00am. My brother and I would hit the course at 5:00am, and run between shots. We'd usually get in 27 holes.

One brush with fame, too. I caddied in a foursome that included Yvan Cournoyer, one of the legends from the Montreal Canadiens.

[Adelante]

120. I think it was $1.25

Working in a gift store when I was 14 and just got my working papers.

[Bonobo]

121. $3.25. nt

[Hepburn]

122. Babysat in the 1950s for 10-cent/hour....

...worked as a Nurse's Aid in the mid-1960s ~~ working my way through undergrad school ~~ somewhere around $1.60/hour.

[Trucker Bob]

123. I was making 4 cents a mile hauling propane up the Alaska Highway in 1967.

[madokie]

124. In the summer of '63

I worked as a drywall hangers nail driver making .85 cents an hour. My weekly paycheck was 30 some dollars and I couldn't spend it all.

[Hubert Flottz]

125. $90.00 a month working for Uncle Sugar at sunny fort Ord

Kolley-4-knee-ya in 1970.

I pumped ethyl and checked for oil in 1966 for $1.15 an hour.

I worked almost 900 feet in the air on the New River bridge in 1976 for $10.88 an hour.

I paid $10.88 for two and a half gallons of ethyl in 2008 thanks to George Bush and the people I pumped ethyl for back in 1966.

Now days if it cost a nickel to sh!t, I'd have to puke, thanks to the de-regulators and union busters in the GOP.

[Riverman]

126. $1 an hour cleaning apt complex managed by my aunt, who fired me

because I wanted to come in two hours late on Sat after being up all night after the junior prom! 1968 - week before RFK was killed, month after Martin Luther King assassinated! Worked 20 hrs/wk, ran track and cross-country and got into college, no sweat!

[obiwan]

127. $1.65 an hour in 1972.

At a now defunct modeling clay factory in Huntington, Indiana called Art Chemical Company. I packed the boxes of clay into cartons and dragged 1900 pound pallets manually out to the warehouse. My rent was $100 a month, gas was 47 cents a gallon, and ground beef was 88 cents a pound. I worked several part time jobs before that for less, but this was my first full time job. I worked during the day and attended high school at night my senior year so I could graduate with my class. I had to work- my family moved away and my girlfriend still lived in Huntington. Like most 17 year olds, I was ignorant and "in love" so I stayed.

If you haven't figured it out, I am now 54 years old. I am disabled, and my disability is about what I made... in 1985. I also worked at a plant that manufactured raw fiberglass insulation and another that made asbestos-based automotive and commercial products. Good healthy jobs.

My "girlfriend" married my brother's best friend, had a daughter by him, and divorced him several years later. He's dead now (From brain cancer, even though he was a stupid, ignorant fuck.) (He drank like a fish.) I escaped Indiana in 1981, and have lived in California ever since.

Those (cough cough) were the days.

I am on my second marriage, and my little girl (from my first) is 22 now.

I got 2 college degrees with a 4.0 GPA, and I have been married to my wife for 15 years. She's disabled too.

We are a couple of old hippies.

[bridgit]

129. $5 per hr

[Nay]

130. 1.20 per hour at a bakery in Florida, 1970. My mom remembers

working in the Canadian post office system during the Depression for 10 cents an hour.

[Arkansas Granny]

131. I worked for $1.00 and hour at my first job out of high school. The minimum

wage had just been raised to $1.25 an hour so they called it a salary of $40.00 per week instead of paying me an hourly wage. I never missed a day so I don't know if they would have docked me if I had missed any work or not.

[kojak]

132. $4.25/hr in 1993

16 years later and I think I'm making less in real wages.

[Paulie]

133. $4.25 at Subway in 1989

In 1990 went to a different Subway for an extra 25 cents an hour. Worked 39.5 hours a week closing 6 nights. Got a free meal every day which is why I look today like the subway guy did, before his 800 kcal or so diet. :-)

[kiranon]

134. 85 cents/hr and paid in cash in a little brown envelope at Woolworths

[Angleae]

135. I believe it was $535/month

USAF, airman basic, 1986.

[HeeBGBz]

136. Worked at a doughnut/burger place for $1.10 when I was 13

Worked there 2 years.

[emmadoggy]

137. $3.35/hr. in 1986 (minimum wage).

The highest hourly wage I have ever made is what I am currently making - $8.69/hr.

But that is working as a substitute which means the work is only occasional. At my previous "regular" job, I made $8.50/hr. as a pharmacy technician.

The most I have ever made in one year is $14,700 (gross).

[mykpart]

138. $1.25 an hour, which was minimum wage in 1963.

I was a salesgirl in a Montgomery Ward.

[Stuart G]

139. 25 cents an hour delivering drugs at a neighborhood drug store

After a while, he boosted it to 35 cents an hour. But you could buy a ten cent candy bar that costs about a buck today.

[RushIsRot]

140. I got $5 a week working in a YMCA Summer Day Camp. 1957

[surrealAmerican]

141. I made $1 an hour babysitting when I was a teenager ...

... in the late '70s to early '80s. My first "on the books" job was as a summer camp counselor: $400 for the whole summer, 6 days a week, about 10 hours a day, and we were expected to be working at all meals.

[REP]

142. $2.01/hr; waiting tables; early 80s

[Sabriel]

143. Two bucks legal minimum, early '80s

I did farm work and was a server in a restaurant. One for tips, one without.

You gotta love work to bale hay for $2/hour. Worst.Job.Ever.

[B Calm]

144. 50 cents an hour plus tips. Curb Hop at Marty K drive in. . .1967

[Bluebear]

154. Roller skates? :)

[DeepBlueC]

184. do you remember what the minimum wage was in yr state at the time?

For regular (non-tipping) jobs?

[csziggy]

145. $1.35 an hour part-time at the university library; $1.65 an hour as a Clerk II for the state

Workmen's Comp office. If I remember correctly, Clerk I positions made below federal minimum wage at that time but state governments were exempt from having to pay minimum wage. After all deductions, my take home was less than $300 per month.

[RB TexLa]

146. $4.35/hr $1 over min in 1987 at a chemical processing plant. My first summer job.

[specimenfred1984]

147. I used to clean chariots for 5 denarius a month

The whippings were horrible!

[spanone]

148. .65 per hour....root beer stand '66

[pipoman]

149. $1.25 hr plus $.10 per 5 gallon bucket of cucumbers

picked. I was 14 and turned out the company who hired us was violating child labor laws. He was fined $10,000 and was not allowed to employ minors after that.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

150. $1.25 an hour

campus job during college in the late 1960s

[XemaSab]

151. $6.65

I think. :shrug:

I worked for 10, but that's what was posted in the break room.

[liberalhistorian]

152. $3.35 an hour was the minimum wage when I started working, and

remained the minimum for many years afterwards. My teenage son laughs his ass off at that, which also shows how old his mama is getting!

[Bluebear]

153. $1.00 an hour as a library page when I was 13

[rainbow4321]

155. First job: McDonald's for $3.35/hour

Early 80's.

Found this chart:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0774473.html

[Breeze54]

156. I was forced to work for free.

Does that count? :shrug:

[bikebloke]

158. I think a dollar something.

The early 70's working part-time at a movie theater.

*The old Centre Theatre on Quaker Lane in Alexandria for you local folks who may remember.

[havocmom]

159. $1.85 an hour; 10 years after my mom was making $1.00 an hour

And she had lots of experience when she got that dollar an hour job. The 1.85 job I had was my first.

Twenty years after that, my daughter was making $2.15 an hour.

I assure you, the cost of living went up a whole lot faster than wages over that 30 year span.

[DainBramaged]

161. $1.25 an hour as a grocery clerk in 1967

[guyton]

162. lost money teaching university in 1995 or so

Was paid only an honorarium to teach a semester long course on Unix. Had a blast, but had to quit after one term since I was seriously losing money after paying for the gas for the commute.

[wickerwoman]

164. Around $5 an hour bagging groceries in 1992

but in the summer and fall I made $15 an hour refereeing youth soccer. My brother's paper route also paid significantly better than this.

[stewartcolbert08]

166. 5.15 but 2.13 while waiting tables!

[Thothmes]

167. I worked for a farmer

putting up hay bales during the summer. He paid one cent a bail for each bale handled by a field creww. If you crew moved 800 bales during the day, he paid you $8.00. Lowest regular wage I earned was $1.25 an hour working for the U.S.Forest Service during a couple of summers.

[last_texas_dem]

168. Earned $5.30/hr. at my first job (movie theater); minimum wage at the time was $5.15/hr.

[RebelOne]

169. Baby-sitting as a teenager at 35 cents an hour. n/t

[sniffa]

170. $3/hr picking up trash and cutting weeds at the local park

1989 and my first job the summer before High School.

[ShortnFiery]

171. $1.50 / hour at a Pancake House - made the difference in tips to minimum wage 1976 = $ 3.00/hr.

Working the mid shift was not FUN because we were located directly across the street from a bar. Use your imagination? I was on my own and only 17 y.o. it was the most depressing time of my life - I thank God that my youth and persistence kept me going through that horror. :(

[blindpig]

173. $1.65/hr, 1972, 'park maintence assistant'

I was a cut rate zoo keeper, sans the union pay rate. It was a federal poverty program.

[Libertyfirst]

174. $3.00 for a ten hour day working in tobacco in North Carolina.

[Mike 03]

175. I think it was $3.80 or $4.00. Burger King, High School.

On Edit:

This gets my vote for most creative question at DU in weeks.

Fun and fascinating.

[enigmatic]

176. $1.50 an hour plus tips

1977.

[slackmaster]

177. $2.35 per hour

The year was 1973. I was working as a box boy at a grocery store.

[KathieG]

178. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $4.75.

[tjwash]

179. 2.25 an hour..

6 months later I got a raise to 2.45!!

Woo-hoo, talk about living large.... :woohoo:

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

181. $5.75 I think..

The minimum wage was $5.25 at the time I think. I can't remember, but it was about that. It was 1996. I'm just glad I'm not making that anymore. I believe minimum wage is supposed to be up to $7.50 by this October in Maine.

[DeepBlueC]

182. 50 and 75 cents an hour waiting table-summer 1968 in Maine

Waiting table one summer in Maine in my college town. Minimum wage laws didn't apply to restaurant work apparently. One restaurant paid .75 which shocked me but after I got sacked I took a cocktail waitressing job for .50 at another place. That was way lower than I would have got anywhere else in New England but I reason to want to spend the summer in the town.

[ddeclue]

183. $3.35/hr - 1984.

:)

[doc03]

186. I worked in the summers putting in hay

for 50 cents an hour in the early 60's. My first job actually covered by the minimum wage law was in 1965 as a busboy, the minimum wage was $1.25 but restaurants only had to pay 75 cents an hour. The waitresses kicked in 50 cents an hour from their tips to give us a total of $1.25. In 1966 I got a job with AT&T for $2.10, that doesn't sound like much today but it would probably be equal to $20 an hour today. You could by a new Corvette for a little over $3000 back then.