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.
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.
Today, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and two U.S. Congressmen have proposed raising it to $10.10. Washington state, meanwhile, recently raised its minimum wage to $9.19 an hour—the highest rate in the country.
That made us recollect our own first job and how much we made. So we posed the question to our friends on the Mercer Island Patch Facebook page, and got some fun answers:
- "MI Baskin-Robbins, 1979, the state min wage was then $1-something per hour. We also got to take two scoops of ice cream per shift!"
- "2.26 an hour 77' Remlinger Farms. Farming."
- "What a fun question. Mine was at Carvel's Ice Cream, making 2.75 an hour, circa 1982."
- "$8.00 plus seasons' pass in Mt. Operations at Bear Mt Resort, CA, c. 1996"
- "Worked in college for 35 cents per hr. also, first teaching job I received $6400 per year. 1968"
- "1979 $2.90 - local pizzeria"
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Do you remember working for minimum wage? What was it and what did you do? Tell us in the comments section.
