What is the cheapest hourly wage you remember working for??
In the summer of 1965 between HS graduation and starting college in August I worked at a local factory. I was paid the princely sum of $1.65 an hour. This included an extra 10 cents for working the second shift. With this hourly wage I was able to pay for 1 semester of school including dorm room and board. Surprisingly the food was pretty good.
Can you imagine what your hourly wage would have to be today to work for three months and pay for a semester of school???
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A buck and ten pennies an hour washing dishes but I had a few fringe benefits like free food.
Also remember as a teen-age kid, I did lawn work. Some paid well, like 20 bucks for about a half days work. Some were fair with about 10 for nearly the same amount of time. One in particular neighbor who just happened to be rich, only paid me 3 bucks for mowing a yard the size of 2 football stadiums! Not only was he cheap, I ended up having to use my dads mower and gas when his wouldn't start!!!! Did that job just ONCE and done!
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Early 50's. Worked in a grocery store. .25 cents per hour. Could buy a gallon of reg gas
for .19 cents and go to the movies for a dime. 😀😀😀
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From about '65 to '69, $1.65/hr in a Western Auto store. At the same time, I commuted to college and took 18 semester hours.
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Wow...there's some old people on here! My first hourly wage was $3.25 in the early 80s.
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In the early 70's, I walked beans, mucked barns and baled hay for a buck an hour. On a good day the farmers I worked for would hand me a Ten Dollar bill for 8 hours work and that included a decent lunch most days...
The first job in the real world I had was in 1974 and I started working in a grocery store for 1.65 to start. When they discovered I had experience driving a forklift, I was quickly moved to 2.50 an hour....
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I made $1.60 an hour working in a textile mill.
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.50 cents a gopher killed in the Avocado orchard.
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$1.65 when I started. I soon moved up with some .05 & .10 raises. Back then those nickel and dime raises actually meant something and I was happy to get them! An extra 4 bucks a week was almost a tank full of gas. Bob
Edit to add - in the late 70s I was on salary making almost $30,000/yr + full health insurance. At that time that was pretty dang good and I could actually get ahead financially. Now that is what they want minimum wage to be and have the gov't supply the health insurance!
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65 cents an hour. 1965. Busboy at restaurant in VA. They did feed us lunch.
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$4.25/hr (minimum wage) when I got my work permit at 15 and started as a lifeguard.
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$0.65 at Kenny's Grocery on Sheridan St., Peoria, IL back in 1956. In '58 after graduation, some of my pals went to work at Papst Brewery in Peoria Heights. They were paying over $1.00/hr which seemed like a lot of money. Better still, it was perfectly OK for the workers to pull a bottle off the line and pound it down!
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A whole dollar an hour.
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During Carter's recession I worked for $5/day and my room and board on a cattle ranch. Those were not 8 hour days!
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As a private in US Army in 1961less than $100 a month. After discharge in 1964 as machinist apprentice $1.64 per hour. ---------------------Ray
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I was pimped out to my neighbor at a very young age to do yard work. Was paid two nickles and a couple of green or black jellybeans. On occasion there was another color jellybean available and I always wondered why or what happened to it.
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When I had my paper route in 1959-1961, I made .07 cents per paper. Probably equal to about .03 an hour. Later I was hired on at the local hatchery at the whopping sum of .25 cents an hour.
At about the same time I used to mow the old neighbor ladys 1/2 acre lot for .25 cents. I eventually figured out that I was losing money after I paid for gas and 2 cycle oil, so I quit
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$1.40
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$6.00 for a 9-hour day.
Works out to $.66666 and so on per hour.
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35 cents an hour, but I once got paid $5 to taste beer.
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Couple of them come to mind. Picked tobacco mid 60’s we got paid 13 cents per bin. A bin was something like 18” wide by 30” long. It took a lot of bins to make money.
The other job was working on a fishing boat. We caught cod and I got $1 for each cod I filleted. Made more money then picking tobacco.
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My first job was on a truck farm for$3 a day and $4 a day during haying season. Had to peddle my bike to get there. From there I went to a canning company for $1 per hour.
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Army Private 1964. Got $78/month while working 12 hr. shifts 7 days a week. You do the math.....
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I got the same yonson. 1963 Ft. Knox, KY 10/07/63. Have you checked what a private makes now?
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First job the pay was a nickel a bale that made it into the hay loft and was fed very well
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$13/day from "can to can't" (10 - 12 hrs depending on the sun) , farm/ranch work. Same wage the family men got, except most of them were furnished a ratty house and didn't have to do as much in the winter.
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$2.65 per hour 1978 fourteen years old. Made better than that mowing yards and tilling gardens starting at ten years old
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savage170: 30307193130267/comments/30307243688347
First job the pay was a nickel a bale that made it into the hay loft and was fed very well
I remember bucking bales off the bailer, stacking them on the wagon (tight,) an art in itself, (we were usually on pretty steep terrain.) If they went off the wagon, picking them back up and trying to throw them back on the wagon, (inevitably up hill,) truly sucked. (Did not happen very often.)
Would maybe get $20 for a very long, 2000+/- bale day. 75-79'
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I have always been self employed so sometimes I've had to pay for the privilage of working.
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I remember working for $1/hr doing farm work. Good thing my college tuition was only $50/semester back in '67.
Also remember when I made 1st Lieutenant and went over 2 years service (pay raise for both events!) my paycheck was $32 less.
IRS bumped me up a tax bracket so I lost money🙄
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BOOT CAMP - Seventy eight dollars ($78) per month. But I also got free room and board! Combat pay was $56.00 per month in '65 and I lived to spend it.
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