If you were working your first job flipping burgers or washing cars in the '60s, you might have been earning $1.60 an hour — the federal minumum wage in 1968. If you worked for minimum wage in 1980, you would have been getting $1.50 more.
Today, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and Rep. George Miller wants it to be raised to $10.10. Washington State, meanwhile, requires employers pay minimum wage at the highest rate in the country — $9.19 an hour.
If you time-traveled back to the 1930s when the first minimum wage was established in America, you'd be earning a quarter an hour.
That made us recollect our own first job and how much we made (cleaning horse stalls in Bridle Trails, $1.50 per hour). So we posed the question to our friends on the Kirkland Patch Facebook page, and got some fascinating answers:
- "Packing cherries; Cascadian Fruit Shippers ; Wenatchee summer of 1960; 14 years old 75 cents per hour."
- "Farrell's dishwasher 1971 $1.55/hr."
- "Dominoes $7.15 an hour! The Army (now) probably pays me less than Dominoes."
- "Sunshine Pizza in Houghton $5.35hr 1982."
- "1968 - dishwasher at the Rim Room at SeaTac, $1.60/hr (equivalent to $10.50 in 2012 dollars)."
- "First job in 1982, $2 an hour as a skating rink snack bar cashier. I think I got a quarter raise with the "promotion" to cashier at the front window. It was just the beginning of a long tradition of underestimating my own worth."
- "Worked at Kingsgate Daycare and Preschool for $2.00 an Hour and then 7-11 making slurpees for $2.25"
- "BB's This and That in Redmond for 1.25 an hour. Probably under the table. LOL."
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Do you remember working for minimum wage? What was it and what did you do? Please share your experience below.
