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Cabinet Members Share Their First Jobs for Labor Day
August 29, 2025 · The White House · 0:01:58
Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube
What happened
In a White House Labor Day video, cabinet members shared their first jobs. One recalled that her parents insisted she get a job when she wanted to be a cheerleader and could not afford the uniform, so she packed peaches at a packing house in Hanford, California, working 12-hour days, losing 15 pounds, raising the uniform money, and still loving peaches today, according to her account.
Another recalled cleaning floors at a local grocery store called Big Star for five years, from high school into college, according to the video. Others described delivering newspapers in downtown Honolulu, starting at a local community library at minimum wage before a promotion to retail cashier and then dress-shirt supervisor with a 50-cent-per-hour raise, lifeguarding at the indoor pool where his mother worked, and working at the Washington Zoo’s reptile house feeding reptiles and cleaning cages and glass, according to the members’ accounts.
One member said his parents instilled a strong work ethic from a young age, and another said he learned that the little things count and that whatever you do you should apply all your talents and energy to doing it well, closing with the claim that under the president’s leadership every American who wants to work has the opportunity to strive and earn the American dream, according to the video.
Why it matters
The Labor Day piece is the cabinet’s human-scale pitch for the administration’s work message: senior officials presenting their own entry-level jobs as the first rung of the ladder they say policy should keep open.
Sources: The White House, “Trump Administration Cabinet Members Share Their First Job for Labor Day”, 2025-08-29 (official upload, embedded above; published 2025-08-29). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.