High School and College worked as a lifeguard on the busiest beach in CA. Starting pay was $15.50US / hour. That was in 1998. Paid for my degree in Journalism from CSU. Tried to become a journalist and starting pay out of college was $22,000US / year. Couldn't quit the lifeguard (seasonal) job because I made more in 5 months as a lifeguard than a full-time reporter (probably could have stuck it out and made a decent living). Didn't take my lifeguard career serious at all. Spent 7-8months out of the year in foreign countries surfing and living like a dirtbag. Great fun though.
Took one class in college on HTML and "blogging" and started a blog to keep the writing skills decent. This somehow transitioned into creating a complete site for a non-profit I was involved with.
Used a dreamweaver template to create that site - all visual editor, no code! (I look back on this like wtf?!). A friend of mine quit his bigwig financial job after teaching himself HTML and CSS. He started his own little business doing mostly custom WordPress themes. I told him I had some chops and wanted to do it full time. He sent me to Treehouse. And after another summer of lifeguarding (now making around $23/hr), I spent the off-season teaching myself how to code.
Began placing my work into a little portfolio, which a recruiter sniffed out and contacted me for a job. I took it. It was WAY over my head. The devs in that job must have seen me struggling to create a full-blown site from a PSD (for a multi-national BigPharma company mind you) and they canned my ass!
This was partially on the recruiter b/c I learned later they wanted someone with 2-3years frontend/JavaScript exp.
Long story short, I kept taking jobs through the recruiter, and then applied to a job at a local ad agency direct. Worked there for a year, and after that, with the agency experience, I could easily get hired at other gigs. I think the best thing was that they were comfortable with my level, and I was honest with them after getting let go from the other job with exactly what I could - and could not (yet) do. So they encouraged me to learn and grow and get better on the job.
IMO if you're in this field and you get shit done, you're going to have a job. There's not enough of us to fill the positions.