Honestly, when I was working at my first job doing retail at Mervyn's, I expected like $12 - 14/hour just based on the experience of working at Mervyn's.
When I got absolutely no call backs from tons of applications, I had to stop and consider what tangible skills I had from working at Mervyn's. Different companies have different PoS systems, so would have still needed to get trained on the basics at a new retail job.
That's when I started looking at different kinds of jobs. I went to telemarketing... HATED IT. On top of that, a dude in my training class threatened to kill people. Went back to retail because "holy crap, retail is better than telemarketing." Second retail job was worse the 1st by far and they hardly gave me any hours. Went back to a different telemarketing job for a week, then got hired at Dell as a material handler in a factory for $9/hour.
I thought I'd try to stick it out a Dell for a while. Then like a month or two in one of my bosses told me people had been there for 10+ years and still weren't making $12/hour. Dell career plans dashed. Still didn't really have tangible skills.
I then moved to a data entry position for $11/hour. This was super simple and I was REALLY good at it because I typed about 110wpm back then. They wanted us to process 120 records per day, and when I got used to the system I was processing 200 by lunch time. The computers were for business use only, but I'd still be an idiot and browse the internet to take a break. One lady who sat behind me asked my boss out loud, "Does he do his work?" "Very well!" was his response. They fired me for continuing to browse the internet, though, lol. I deserved it.
Then I got a tech support position for $8/hour starting off. I ended up being really good at it and got a few promotions in the 1st year. Starting month 13, I was making $12/hour as a level 2 tech support rep and thought I was moving on up in the world like elevators. I eventually got another raise to $12.50/hour and was in strong consideration to be a level 3 rep for $14/hour. They made a decision to stop promoting people to level 3 and give the level 2s all the level 3's work. $12.50 became the pay ceiling for me there.
I quit that job after 4.25 years and went to a desktop support job for $11/hour + commission. I averaged about $12.20/hour and it was a lot better stress-wise. I could dive in and fix a lot more problems than you're allowed to with ISP support, and I was one of the top tech support agents in our call center.
After about a year and a half of that, I got hired at another company as an entry level NOC tech for $13/hour. I thought I had it made. The job was super low stress because I was working graveyard shifts, and I was learning networking like I had been wanting to do for years. About 6 months into this job, I started studying for Cisco certs.
I got my CCENT and got a raise to $16/hour. I got my CCNA and got a raise to $17/hour. I got my CCNA security and got a raise to $20/hour. They promoted me to network engineer for $50k/year salary. This was my 1st salaried position. I went on to get my CCNP route/switch cert back in 2016 and got hired at my current job as a contractor for $35/hour.
Fast forward two years later, I finally got hired on full time and now I'm at $85k base salary, which is pretty nice.
Long story short, I had to grow the eff up and get some tangible skills to make a decent income.
Great story - really shows the absurdity of people who want to drop out of high school in grade 9 and flip burgers thinking it entitles them to a detached house and a nice car. ---