The Surprising First Jobs of 17 U.S. Presidents

To become commander-in-chief, one might think you need to be highly educated with plenty of political experience. And while that's often true, not all American presidents went straight from diapers to law office to the Oval Office. Many started from humble beginnings, working odd first jobs, just like the rest of us. 

Here are the surprising first jobs of 16 U.S. Presidents. 

b. 1732 – 1799

President: 1789 – 1797

Long before crossing the Delaware, the first president of the U.S. was out in the field surveying land in Virginia as a teenager. At age 16, after briefly entertaining the idea of a career in the Royal Navy, George Washington began his study of geometry and surveying. 

In 1748, after completing just a few practice surveys, Washington joined George William Fairfax and James Genn, an experienced surveyor, on a month-long expedition across the Blue Ridge Mountains.  

While he wasn’t the lead surveyor on the trip, this experience kicked off Washington’s connection with the influential Fairfax family, which helped him climb the social ladder in Virginia.

b. 1735 – 1826

President: 1797 – 1801 

After graduating from Harvard in 1755 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, John Adams planned to practice law, but instead he became a schoolmaster in Worcester, Massachusetts. Teaching didn’t exactly ignite his passion, and according to his diary, the second president of America often felt intellectually unstimulated in the classroom. 

According to the University of Groningen's biography of John Adams, his teaching style was peculiar, sometimes treating his classroom like a dictatorship, imagining himself as a ruler and his students as politicians or generals. He also had a habit of assigning the smartest student to lead the class while he would read or write at his desk. 

b. 1767 – 1845

President: 1829 – 1837

Andrew Jackson was born into poverty in the Carolinas in 1767 and had a tough upbringing. 

At 13, Jackson joined the local militia and worked as a courier, delivering messages between troops during the American Revolution in 1779. Two years later, when he turned 15, British soldiers captured the future president. One of the officers struck Jackson with a sword for refusing to clean the officer’s boots, leaving him with a permanent scar and a deep hatred for the British. 

b. 1809 – 1865

President: 1861 – 1865

Honest Abe was born in 1809 in a log cabin with dirt floors in Hardin County, Kentucky, to illiterate parents. 

When he was 17, Lincoln found work on a ferryboat. He also built a flatboat and ran produce down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. He then sold his boat for the timber and returned home to give his earnings to his father. 

Lincoln worked many other jobs before pursuing a law and political career. He was a store clerk, a postmaster, a surveyor, and a soldier. In 1837, he moved to Springfield, Illinois, where he began practicing law after teaching himself the subject by reading legal texts like Blackstone's Commentaries. 

b. 1808 – 1875

President: 1865 – 1869

Just like his predecessor Lincoln, the 17th president of the U.S., Andrew Johnson—who was serving as vice president when Lincoln was assassinated — was also born in extreme poverty, in a two-room shack in Raleigh, North Carolina. At 14, his mother apprenticed Johnson and his brother to a local tailor, where he signed a legally binding contract to serve until the age of 21. While working in the tailor shop, Johnson learned basic literacy skills from other employees and customers who would read to the tailors as they worked. After learning the trade, Johnson ran away, leaving both the tailor and the contract behind. 

Later, at his mother's urging, Johnson returned to the city, and the entire family moved to Greeneville, Tennessee. There, young Andrew set up his own tailor shop, met his wife, and soon after served as town alderman and mayor. 

b. 1831 – 1881

President: March 1881 until his assassination in September that year.

James Garfield, the 20th president of the U.S., stayed in the White House for less than six months, from March to September, when he was killed by an assassin's bullet. But long before he entered the presidential chair, he had a very different career. Born in a log cabin on an impoverished farm in Ohio, Garfield dreamed of exploring distant ports. As a teenager, he left home to fulfill his calling as a sailor but was rejected by every ship. Instead, he was employed by his cousin, who owned a canal boat, tending to the mules that pulled it. Garfield, who couldn’t swim, ended up falling into the canal about 16 times and ended up contracting malaria along the way. 

b. 1833 – 1901

President: 1889 – 1893

Benjamin Harrison, followed in the footsteps of his grandfather, the ninth president of the U.S. William Harrison. But long before becoming the 23rd president of the U.S, and before starting his law and political career, Harrison had a rather odd start in the working world. "Oyez, oyez, oyez" was something he would say daily when he briefly worked as a court crier, earning $2.50 a day. 

b. 1857 – 1930

President: 1909 – 1913

 Long before H. Taft sat in the presidential chair — or the Supreme Court bench, for that matter — he had a very different role. The summer after graduating as class salutatorian at Yale, Taft, while reading law in his father’s office, took a job as a courthouse reporter for the “Cincinnati Commercial.”

b. 1874 – 1964

President: 1929 – 1933

Herbert Hoover had a successful career as a geologist and mining engineerbefore becoming the 31st president of the U.S. However, that wasn’t his first profession. Orphaned at a young age, Hoover was raised by his uncle. At 13 years old, he became clerk in his uncle’s real estate company, the Oregon Land Company. Hoover, who skipped high school, attended night school, where he learned mathematics, typing, and bookkeeping.

b. 1908 – 1973

President: 1963 – 1969

You may have heard stories of shoeshiners bragging about shining the shoes of a future president. In Lyndon B. Johnson’s case, the story is a bit different — he was the future president who worked as a shoeshiner. At the age of 9, Johnson worked as a shoeshiner in the valley of the Pedernales River, right across from the only barber shop in Johnson City. There, he shined the shoes of servicemen returning from World War I.

b. 1913 – 1994

President: 1969 – 1974

Before becoming one of the most controversial figures of his time — and the first U.S. president to resign in disgrace — Nixon was a man of many jobs. His first one, in the summer of 1928 during his stay in Prescott, Arizona, involved plucking chickens for a local butcher. Before eventually calling the White House his home, Nixon also worked as a carnival barker, janitor, pool boy at a country club, and clerk at his father's grocery store.

b. 1924

President: 1977 – 1981

The longest-lived former president in U.S. history started from peanuts. Quite literally. Jimmy Carter’s parents owned a peanut farm outside the small town of Plains, Georgia, where the future president was born. When Carter was 10, he began working on the family farm, stacking produce onto a wagon, hauling it into town, and selling it. By the time he turned 13, he had saved enough money to buy five houses around Plains that were dirt cheap thanks to the Great Depression. 

b. 1911 – 2004

President: 1981 – 1989

It’s well known that before becoming the 40th president of the U.S., Ronald Reagan was a prominent Hollywood actor, spending nearly 30 years acting in feature films and television shows. But a lesser-known fact is that young Reagan, a talented swimmer since childhood, worked as a lifeguard on the treacherous Rock River in Lowell Park, Dixon, Illinois. He reportedly saved 77 people from drowning, according to MillerCenter.

b. 1946

President: 1993 – 2001

Before becoming the 42nd president of the United States, Bill Clinton — as he once said— had done 23 different jobs to earn money throughout his life. His first paying gig came at age 13, when he worked at a grocery store, earning $1 an hour stacking produce. While there, Clinton convinced the owner to let him sell his old comic books, making an impressive $150 from the sales.

b. 1961

President: 2009 – 2017

Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, is famous for being probably the only person alive to not like ice cream. This dislike stems from his first job back in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he worked as an ice cream scooper at Baskin-Robbins. It might seem like an easy summer gig, but according to Obama, "Scooping ice cream is tougher than it looks. Rows and rows of rock-hard ice cream can be brutal on the wrists." 

b. 1946

President: 2017 – 2021 

The former president collected soda bottles for deposit money as his first job and earned a “below-average allowance” from the gig.  

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b. 1942

President: 2021

Back in his high school days, the 46th U.S. President Joe Biden worked as a lifeguard at Prices Run swimming pool in Wilmington, Delaware. In the summer of 1962, Biden took the job to get to know the local community better — where he was the only white lifeguard at an inner-city pool. In 2017, the pool was renamed "Joseph R. Biden Sr. Aquatic Center" to honor his connection with the neighborhood.