What People In The Wild West Did For Work

May 2024 · 2 minute read

We'll go ahead and get the most popular, romanticized job out of the way. The American West "cowboy" is often the life getting framed on the big screen, but the job itself wasn't always as glamorous as Hollywood would have us believe. In its simplest form, the cowboy was responsible for one thing — protecting the cattle on the ranch that employed them, according to History. After all, bandits and outlaws knew how much cattle were worth, and without protection — and sometimes with it — cattle were known to go missing. 

The ironic thing is that while cowboy is such an Americanized job, the actual cowboy originated in Mexico, per American Cowboy. Known as vaqueros, the "Mexican cowboy" had the same job description as the "American cowboy" — protecting and overseeing cattle. The resume of a vaquero and/or cowboy needed to include very specific things, such as roping, lassoing, herding, and riding, which would all be used to keep cattle together and to bring stragglers back to the pack. 

Cowboys made a decent living, earning anywhere between $25 and $40 a month (via History), which, when equated to the modern day, is about $950 to $1500. They had to earn it though, with days extending far beyond the modern eight-hour workday, oftentimes going near double that.

The job as a mainstream occupation largely died out by the 1920s. With that said, there are still cowboys today. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 847,600 jobs in 2021 for "farmers, ranchers, and agricultural managers," of which cowboys would fall. The bureau projects a 3% decline in employment, however, from 2021 to 2031.

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