How old were you when you received your first real pay check? I was 16 and working in a gas station. Before that I did almost anything for some spending money. Shoved snow, mowed lawns, dug gardens, baled hay, trapped a little, washed and polished cars, ect.

I also was 16 working at a drive-in

I was 16 when I first started receiving a real paycheck weekly where taxes were taken out n etc. That first real job like that for me was working for a fairly large chain of grocery stores.I worked at the one in my home town bagging groceries,stocking shelves,facing shelves,glass bottle returns,clean up type work sweep and mop.

It probably was around the spring of 1985. I believe the minimum wage then was a whopping $3.35 per hour !! I think we may have started at $3.75 per hour. Before that I mowed quite a few yards and did odd jobs.

Fifteen and a half. Working at a local butcher shop. The owner would cash our checks for us from the till.

If we worked outside legal hours, we'd get pad in cash.

Maybe 12. Detassling corn.

I was 13. Worked for a pulp jobber. I cleaned the horse barns. they were skidding with horses . Received a pay envelope on Friday. He paid in cash . Sunday I took horses out for water and to clean the barn s. they were more like canvas lean too;s

16.......worked at Pizza Villa, downtown La Crosse, WI.
3rd Street (bars, etc)
Friday & Saturday nights we had a bouncer for the "ill behaved" , and for good reason. Observed some eye opening situations during that time. Even the police didn't want to break up a "cat fight" (two women going at it).

Prior to this, odd jobs to scrounge some cash. I also was a caddy here and there.

got paid in cash
was 14 and had to show up ever day after school and weekends tending to near 200 head of hogs.
did get alot of time off for football season lol

14

Worked for a welder dad knew

Cleaned shop, mowed yard and did some cleanup work on parts on Saturdays

I was 16, worked at the local iron foundry 3 hours every morning before school. Knocking out pig iron and sweeping the pour deck, made good money for a high school kid.

Zim

First Job....where they took taxes out...I was 15.

Working at the sports shop in town...fixing bikes..putting new bikes

Together... sharpening skates ..selling hockey & Ski equipment.

All for 1.60 per hour...I remember riding home on my 10 speed with no hands

And looking at my first check ...I though I was RICH !!!!

14....in tobacco field cropping tobacco....$12/day.

Worked every summer for various tobacco farmers until I was 18.....and making $20/day.

We have a saying down here in the Deep South...if you grew up working in a tobacco field, you can work anywhere.

Best part was every farmer's wife cooked dinner (lunch to you yanks). It was a spread of the best southern cooking and fresh vegetables and meats you can imagine.....with all the sweet tea you could drink.

Always brought me a clean shirt to change into after dinner at 1pm before we went back to the field. The morning shirt stunk and was soaked and covered in sticky tar. I always hated touching that first sticky leaf after dinner with a full belly.

Where are these young workers today?
Not here that I can find.

Single parent and being the oldest,
I started pretty early.

When I graduated to screw gun guy
on grain dryers I knew I made it big lol.

14. Bucking hay bales for a neighboring ranch. Worked all summer for several years.

fifth grade summer so 11. $56.22 in real money in a little brown envelope for two weeks in a Zobel's boat yard in NJ. I could not believe that they told me TAXES were taken out every week from MY MONEY. I was expecting the $60 they told me

12 I got paid in cash

13 I got a paycheck

Parents had to fill out a form at school and stuff if I recall right.

Worked at a funeral home age 12 - 25

Twelve when I had a paper route, but mowed lawns and stuff before. Then at 15 working in a fly fishing shop, (yes they existed in the early 70's).

Started getting my paychecks signed by my wife when I was 25. We opened our first fly shop and she always paid herself less, even though she worked as much as I did.

Pete

16 Worked in a restaurant and painting houses in the summer
Had 2 paper routes (morning and evening) when I was 12 -16 but no paycheck

16 for the first check. Groundskeeper for the local knothole. Paid in cas before that. Bailing, umpiring and mowing.

14 working at a landfill

14, driving tractors in rice fields

14 off bearing at saw mill.... Didn't have the pleasure of working tobacco fields until latter in life, great people to work with, job not so much. It was honest money and necessary at the time. Made more trapping than all the farm work combined

Me too!

I was 8 in the summer of 1952. I went to work for my uncle who owned a wholesale pork operation.

I worked 6 days a week, 10 hours a day, 2$ per DAY plus lunch.

16.. I got a job working at the local slaughterhouse cleaning up after school hours.
I rode the school bus to work, walked home,, and checked my traps after work in the dark with my flashlight.
Luckily I had body grips at the time.

I still have memories, snow on the ground, and I always was able to catch the train going over the trestle, watching it go over… and hearing the horn as it pierced through the darkness.
I have thought about writing an article about that time.

12 years old, weeding trk farm vegs, 35 cents an hour, 7 hours, paid in cash end of day

Worked for a nursery after school and Saturday, mostly planting starts, was 1969 I think, , Ag min wage was a buck fifty, lol, and they paid by check...small checks.
Guess I was around 16.

My first paycheck job was at the St. Ann 4 screen drive-in in 1963, I was 14. Made the princely sum of $.25 hr.

14.
Had a job at a cemetery. $1.69/hour.
My job was to stand on the vault in the hole and tamp the dirt down along the sides while the backhoe was delivering the dirt there.
Pay was low, but I never got any complaints from the customers...
I do remember complaining about the 40 cents taken out for taxes. I kid could get sick on that much penny candy back then.

Penny candy

.10 cent Cokes

.08 cent Funny bones

.05 candy bars

.20 cent McDonald's burgers

.10 cent cup of coffee with free refill

16 yrs old , pulp cutter and log peeler.
15 cents a stick . 300 per day, cash out on Fridays.
10% help back in saw check account.
Paid for any equipment needs.
Usually done by early afternoons
Great money late 60's era.

First payroll job.
Lakeside Refinery about 1971.
From there to Checker Motors Corp.
Plant closed 35yrs later.
Semi retired for a few yrs.
Then I said done.

9 years old. I couldn’t do much heavy lifting so I was forced in a tractor seat. Took me a couple weeks before I could operate the clutch without leg shake.

I was 15. I cut grass, weed whacked and blew clippings for 50 to 60 some hours a week. I loved getting overtime because I got half again as much for doing the same work.

Keith

"real" meaning with taxes taken out? Probably around 10-12. It was early 90's.

12, stacking lumber at a sawmill.

13, dad slipped me in as hired help on an inventory his employer, IT&T Autowise, was doing. First actual paycheck with taxes cut. This was before computers and everything counted by hand.

At 16 I got kicked out of school and got a second shift factory job.

When I was nine I started wading in three ponds on a nearby golf course at night. I'd find hundred of golf balls, clean them up with the course's ball washers and sell the good ones back to the golfers. \My brother and I would display them in egg cartons on a bench beside the tee off area of Hole 13. We made decent money.

I was a trap boy for the local gun club starting at ten-years-old. In a couple of years I graduated to score keeper which paid twice as much as being a trap boy.

And trapping that whole time which was relatively lucrative in the 70's.

Oh and we dug around in old farm dumps and sold our good finds at a local flea market.

15 landscape/mowing

16, bucking hay bales. Thought I was in fat-city, the guy paid me $2 an hour, when minimum wage was $1.60 an hour.

Got a summer job as a fishing guide at a remote fly in camp when I was 15.
That fall I got a part time job at the dairy,packing the boxes with dairy products and take to the north train for people living remote along the moosonee line and the seneterre east line.
Also delivered milk with the truck in town on saturday mornings.That part of the job was interesting to say the least as saturday was collection day.
And of course the fur cheques from trapping after school in winter.
later on when still in high scool worked summers tree planting and timber cruising as well as the railroad.
Railroad was my favorite summer job in high scool and I made it my career.

13 at farm work, always wanted to work and save money when younger

14 years old. Had to get "WORKING PAPERS" Went to the school nurse. Saw the Doctor. He's says turn your head and cough while feeling for a hernia! You guys know where lol
Bingo, got your working papers and can get a real paycheck...can't remember if they took deductions at that age

16yo, 1972. $1.65/ hr..

My first job was $1.00 hr, 1973

12 and 13 worked at a resort up the road $2 per hour cash,13,14,15 worked on the home farm,dad had me running a crew of people hand picking wild oats,yes back in the late 70's and early 80's we had our fields clean enough to hand pick.Years later they formulated better sprays,$6 per hour cash.Age 15 and 16 first pay stub with some guy named FICA was taking some of my money LOL started trapping in 1978 by 1980 I was catching enough furs to make a difference $70 to 100 fox,$8 to 12 muskrat,$30 to 50 mink and the coons were in the teens to $30 range.

8....Working the summer tomato fields. Started suckering, staking, and tying the plants to stakes....Was picking by 12, and also started in the tobacco fields at that age.

12 ,building houses with my grandfather.

12 or 13. I walked to work at a grocery store in our little town. Bagged groceries and carried em out to older people’s cars. Did that some days of the week. Weekends I worked in the local bakery too. Then later that same year one of the local farmers/contractors hired me to disc fields in spring and I worked on his framing crew in summers building homes. I had a lot of jobs and paychecks before I even had a drivers license.
Jim

Real pay check,,14.Worked on Muck Farm for $1 an hour,6 days a week,12 hours a day.We had Sunday off.Got a brown envelope at the end of the week with $72 in it and was happy to get it.Before that,, the Ole Man gave me a nickel for every Rat I trapped or shot out of the barn.Also,,bailing hay at 12 years old but that dont count.Every neighbor kid did that for whatever the farmer would give you for the day.usually enough for an ice cream and a tube of BBs for your BB gun at the end pf the day.

Picked apples the fall of 1967 shortly after my dad died. Got paid in cash. I was 12.

13-14 , worked my my uncle dying the summer doing construction.. man I thought $150 for a 50hr week was some GOOD money

Never got an allowance , made any money growing vegetables and selling them on the road side in the front yard.
Don't remember how old, but around the second grade.
Baled hay for 10 cents an hour, easy job, just pulled the string before the baler knotted .
LOL 20 cents was enough for a Pepsi and a Nickles cherry pie, turn in the bottle and have 2 cents in my pocket.
Cleaned gutters in the dairy barn, pitched manure, and pushed a wheel barrel of it on to the pile in front of the barn.
All before I was 11.
Don't remember what I made , but it was my money.
Painted milk houses when not baling hay or straw.
Was at least 12-13 when I got my first check, and taxes taken out.
Landscaping , rolling sod, and laying sod.
Working seed lawns, and covering with straw.
Worked in a Dairy Isle for a summer , cash. That was the easiest job , and got to eat my mistakes. LOL.
Worked in an orchard pruning apple trees , and mixing concrete for a new 8 inch deep floor for apple storage.
All by hand in a mixer , that did whatever a bag of cement and sand/gravel made at a time.
Think it was 14 sand, 4 gravel and a bag of cement, @ 14 .
Always found a way to make money , bought my own school clothes from the 6th grade on.
It was life back in the good old days.
Had so much more freedom , could hunt all over and never worry about the landowners caring.
Now if you even just look at a place to hunt, they tell you to stay out.
Those were truly the good old days.

LOL I forgot my best job was a Professional hunter, got a box of 50 22 shorts , and paid 1 cent for each starlings, and 2 cents for every woodchuck.
Shot a woodchuck in a culvert pipe 14 times , before I dumped him out and finished him.
Those shorts just broke the skin, and bounced off it's skull.
Could see where they hit , all 14 times.
Still can't believe it.
Give me a 22 long rifle round over a short any day.

Age12 trimming Christmas trees minimum wage $0.50 hr. taken out of my pay check was Social Security. Right to Work tax and Income tax. The next year the the minimum wage went to $1.00 wow I was making as much as my dad.

My first real job ( I don't remember if taxes were taken out or if it was under the table) was tying grape vines when I was 12. My mom and aunt were working there as well and got me the job. I was paid $8 per row of tied vines. My first "official" job was as a waitress in a donut shop at 16. By the following year, I was enrolled in college, working 3 jobs, and living on my own.

Worked on rental properties when I was a boy. Digging ditches, unclogging sewer lines, etc. were part of my duties. No pay though.
First paying job was at 16. Hand inserted sales papers into the Sunday addition of a statewide newspaper. Paid by the piece so the faster the better the pay.

17 doing barn chores at a local dairy farm. Stayed there for 13 years mostly milking but I did everything else as needed too. Before that I just worked for whatever my dad felt like giving me for working on our small farm at home. Plus I would do odd jobs for other neighboring farms when they needed extra help. I picked a lot of rocks back in the day.

I was twelve. I was raising calves for my cousin. I got paid so much for getting each calf weaned. He bought them from a farmer who sold them to him when they were a couple days old. He developed polio and always wanted to farm but could not so I raised the calves up for a few months for him.

Bryce

Walked a lot of beans in my early teens. I'm sure there are a lot of younger folks that don't know what that is.

Started getting paid to be a carpenter at 15 in 1977 @ $5hr. That's all I've done.

First real paycheck ... 17, working in the engineering department at Harley - Davidson. If I recall, something like $530/ month. Prior I helped out farmers doing odd jobs: haying, relief milking, ect.

17 Baled hay for a neighboring farm in fall harvested potatoes for the same farm driving a truck with no brakes if you pumped the clutch enough times it mite actuallly shift and graded same potatoes in a dark damp storage building that winter buck fifty an hour plus chores on my Dads farm Felt like a king most guys my age done the same so nothing out of the ordinary getting handed a check Yah great till Dad said if thats what you want to do your whole life You are all set

14 haying all summer

what are we calling a real paycheck

as in the first one anyone thought to take out taxes on ?

that would be 14 I was working construction um I mean for the "farm" I also took a gig that fall at a lumber yard stacking all the lumber in the racks , this was before everything was moved onto pallet racking by a fork truck.
they would get pre winter shipments of lumber and hire a few of us in high school to put it all away.

about 11-12 I was working yard work jobs for widows at church , the job they always had that I hated but it paid. raking all the gravel for the drive way out of the yard every spring.
I hated it but it paid