what was minimum wage when you started

[coyote]

$3.35 hourly in say....1985 or so. You could get a Big Mac for $.99. $1.06 after tax.

California gas was under a buck a gallon. A full sized candy bar was a quarter and a comic book was 35 cents.

[flyweightnate]

I remember when it went from $5.15 to $6. At least gas was under $2 most of the time, and I was still living with mom and dad. I switched to landscaping and helping the local contractors for $11, up until 2008 sank that ship. Ah, summer jobs...

[JeepDVLZ45]

I don’t remember actual minimum wage (I think it was around $6.50) but in a restaurant as a server it was $2.15/hour + gratuity

[jetenginekyle]

That's the exact same wage most servers make now.

[SignOfZeta]

My first job paid $2.25 per hour which was the legal state minimum wage in Michigan in the 80s, a sub McDonalds pay rate legal only if you worked for exempt employers. I think the normal rate was $2.75 and then it went to $3.35 a year or two later.

The always behind the curve adjustments to minimum wage are so laughable now that in my town it essentially doesn’t exist since every employer has to offer significantly more just maintain barely minimal staffing levels. The idea has effectively been abolished but for the opposite reason you’d expect.

[Murph]

It was 6.50 when I started working, but I never made below 7.

[jetenginekyle]

$8 when I started at KFC in 2017. God that job sucked always short staffed and coming home sticky from all the grease. A year later I got a job at the paintball field for~$3 hr more and it didnt even feel like work.

[k_obeastly]

Loved my job at KFC in 96-97 for 4.25. We used to take the wheels off of the trash cans and race them down the hill in the parking lot. We’d yank them out from under each other or knock each other off. Free food. My friend still has pictures from the night we made suits of armor out of the catering dishes.

[Hp_lovecraft]

$3.50 when I started in 87, but fortunately all the restaurants I worked at back then paid double that. All that money went to paintball. Lol

inflation is a killer though. I paid $260 for a brand new tippmann Sl-68 in 88. Adjusted, that’s $700 today.

[Flounder]

$3.10 when I started $3.35 shortly after that, Thanks for the quarter Mr. Carter!

[chrislognshot]

thanks all for just posting about what you made at first or what minimum wage was when you started

[MrBarraclough]

$4.75 when I started working as a lifeguard in the summer of 1997 making $5.00. It rose to $5.15 that September after the pools closed. I think I must've made $5.25 or $5.50 an hour in the summer of 1998. Probably the former, since I was happy to get $5.50 a few years later.

I remember getting $5.50/hour making sandwiches and mopping floors at a Schlotzsky's Deli in college from 2001-2003. I quit that to teach for Kaplan Test Prep & Admissions for something like $15.00/hour for teaching and $9.00 for lesson prep. Fewer available hours, but much better per hour.

For what it is worth, I believe the correct minimum wage is $0.00, because price controls are bad ideas. Working in that deli, I got so see how labor restrictions supposedly intended to help the working poor actually harmed the poorest and least skilled workers. Not that anybody asked.

[acrewofone]

1974, $2.00 per hour.

I worked a 30 hour week at a hardware/farm/feed store, for $1.00 per hour! (less than 40 hours not subject to minimum wage)

[FredMnkyDad10]

My first actual job was in 1989, in CA looks like it was $4.25. Damn I did not know it was that low. First job was summer's at Great America.

Though I when I did start driving 3yrs later, regular gas was like $1.10. And I remember that Diesel was waaaay cheaper than any regular gas.

[evilfishsticks]

I was making $5.15 an hour when i started in 1998, was working at an arcade/ go karts place. It was a fun place to work. It was enough to pay for video games and paintball, so i was happy with it. I remember gas being $1.02 a gallon also at that time.

[maggot]

Was about $5 in '99, but similar to OP the grocer's union took another dollar off that.

[flyweightnate]

I find median wage to be far more interesting than minimum wage.

We did a project when I was in middle school to determine starting salary for our chosen career, and make a budget for our first year. For a mechanical engineer, starting was $68k. Twenty years later... I think it's actually gone down.