If possible, post your pay throughout the years! If you can, post the first approximate year you were in the work force, your dollar per hour or annual salary, if relevant (or an approximate, if you're older like me and can't recall exactly), and the type of work (feel free to be generic as possible, I don't want anyone to get doxxed). And if you can, post your consecutive jobs, years, pay, etc.
It's insane to me how much lower pay is in a variety of fields, these days, and since the people who track our economic stats won't do it, we need more anecdotal evidence… because I KNOW we are going backwards as far as pay goes… and I don't just mean inflation.
I'll start:
First job at around 15-ish in the mid-90s. Got paid $7 an hour to work at a theme park kiosk.
Early 2000s, I got my 1st call center job where the opening pay was $11.78 an hour. In the 3 years I was there, that pay went up to $11.87 an hour (yes, you read that right… a whopping 9cents). Their metric-based, bell-curve pay system really effed over people who didn't “cheat” the system.
Mid 2000s, I ended up at another call center job where I started at $12.50 an hour and highest pay was $16 an hour near the end of my time there: 2011ish.
To date: that is the most money I've ever made a job. Put a pin in that.
Ended up at my first WFH call center job at about $10.50 an hour. Never got a raise. This lasted until about 2016 when I ended up moving states and got a non-call center job at a small grocery store. Pay capped out at… $10.50. Yup. Went backwards… and in a higher min-wage/COL state too.
Ended up back on the west coast (where I am now) and started at a job that paid me $13.25 an hour in Los Angeles in 2018 which was just above the minimum wage. I had to fight with the payroll manager on his legal obligation to increase my wage with the law, annually. Capped out at $15 an hour (because it went through the pandemic times). Left in 2021.
Currently enrolled in school because I couldn't take this cycle anymore.