Entry Level Pay

I made 23K to start, at a paper with a 25,000 circ.

As a single guy with two roommates, it wasn't hard to live off of it.

 

Agreed. $25K, regardless of area.

$30K for the Nor'east and California.

You should be able to afford your own 1-BR apartment with a degree and a job in your chosen field. That's a minimum standard of living. Not much more, granted, but it should be a minimum.

 

Try telling that to my publisher and CEO. New hires get $18K as reporters. They pay their managing editor $25K to start.

I got $25K at my first journalism job back in 2000. I'd say those salaries should be at least $25K and $40K with reporters able to go up to at least $30K if they earn it. If we paid that, then the guy I hired last year who left after only two months probably would have stayed...

 

I got $16K at my first gig, a weekly, back in 1997. Place where I interned, a 25,000 daily, offered me $16K in 1997. I laughed in front of both of them. One said, wait just a sec, ran her finger through their payscale book, stopped at a figure, and said "how about $17,000?". She called it a "bump up" in pay because I had prior experience at the paper. No thanks.

 

Hey, at 18K you'll be eliglible for food stamps in most states.

I wish I was kidding.

 

My first job out of college in 96 was for $8.50 an hour, which is about $17,600 gross. Thank goodness they were fair and generous with their overtime. I was grossing about $30,000 a year when I left after three years.

 

Started at 24K living in a college town. That was very manageable. I can't even fathom living anywhere except my parent's place getting paid below 20K.

 

it has to be a living wage, and with skyrocketing student loan costs the math just doesn't work out. I'm in school now and looking at, at best, 3 years in my parents' house after graduation. And that's with paying every dime I can from a side job to loans before I even get my degree.

At this rate I'd be better off financially if I got my degree and kept my side job and didn't even work at a paper for the first few years after college.

 

Wish I'd had the balls to laugh at my first offer in the field. It took nearly a decade to recover from the slow start.

 

I got my first full time job in the field when I was married, so we were lucky enough to have two incomes. If not for that, there is no way I could make it.

 

I started at 22K eight years ago. It was a liveable wage, although gas cost a hell of a (helluva) lot less back then.

 

Good thing you didn't get your first gig at a JRC paper. You would have said no to the $7.69 an hour they offered, and you would have been jobless.