Just in time for Labor Day weekend, the White House published a video Friday on YouTube featuring Trump Cabinet members sharing their first jobs and lessons learned.
“I wanted to be a cheerleader in high school, and I couldn’t afford the uniform,” Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer recalled, opening the video. “So my first job was packing peaches at Warmerdam’s Packing in Hanford, California, where I was working 12-hour days for the first time.”
A position as a fruit packer at Warmerdam Packing earns an estimated $15 to $18 per hour, with experienced workers making up to $19.
“I lost 15 pounds and I knew all about peaches, and I still love them today,” DeRemer said.
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins said that his first job was a cleaning position at a local grocery store called Big Star. The old store, which closed in the late ’70s, paid cleaners about $7 to $8 per hour.
“Actually,” Collins added, “my first job turned into a five-year experience all the way from high school to college.”
“My first job was not unique,” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said, recalling her time as a newspaper delivery girl in Honolulu, Hawaii. “My parents instilled in all of us a very strong work ethic from a young age.”
“Well, I started at my local community library. It was not the most exciting job, paying pretty much minimum wage,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin said about his first job. “I was able to get a massive promotion over to retail, as a cashier. And I remember the big day when I was given the promotion to dress shirt supervisor, that came with a 50-cent-per-hour raise.”
According to payscale.com, the general pay for a local library assistant today ranges from $12 to $21 per hour.
“My first job was as a lifeguard at the indoor pool that my mom worked at,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recalled. According to Salary.com, the average hourly salary for a lifeguard in the U.S. is approximately $13, with some lifeguards earning as much as $16.26 per hour.
“My first job was working in the Washington Zoo,” Secretary of Health and Human Resources Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recalled. “I was working in the reptile house and I was feeding the reptiles, cleaning the cages, cleaning the glass with the squeegee, and cleaning the guardrails with a brass polisher.”
These days, an entry-level position at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, which includes the reptile house, pays approximately $20 per hour.
“I learned that the little things count,” Kennedy added. “That whatever you do, you should apply all of your talents and all of your energy to trying to do it well.”
