Posted on 06/12/2007 8:00:52 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Why teens have a tough time finding summer work
Many are enrolling in summer classes or doing community service while others are squeezed out by adults competing for the same entry-level jobs.
By Mark Trumbull | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Boston - This summer is shaping up as a tough one for many of America's youngest job seekers.
Camps still need counselors. Ice cream shops still need young arms with a knack for alternating between a scoop and a cash register. And the nation's job market is strong.
Yet teen employment rates haven't rebounded from the recession of 2001. Instead, these numbers are at historic lows.
The reasons include positive forces, such as the rise of new opportunities for summer education and community service. But the trend also reflects more competition from older workers for a shrinking pool of entry-level jobs.
In Boston, 17-year-old Dedric Due says he's scanning the newspaper ads for a job, and so far hasn't found one. With a self-confident bearing, he says he'd like to be an assistant music teacher. But just about anything, from construction to retail, would do. "I'd do whatever job would make me money," he says.
The cooler job market for teens is a challenge not just for them, but perhaps for the whole economy. That's because the young generation is the future workforce.
"How do you learn [to work]? You spend time in the workplace," says Andrew Sum, an economist at Northeastern University in Boston. "Fewer kids are getting serious work experience during their high school years."
It's a year-round challenge, but especially important during the summer, when school is out and more young people seek work.
Consider one measure of the youth labor market, the share of 16- to 19-year-olds who are employed each July.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
I’m surprised this hasn’t come up sooner.
Child labor laws have hurt the working teen.
This is currently a problem for my daughter. She just finished her second year of college and is now home for the summer, and is seeking a summer job, to no luck. Understandly, a few of the places she applied are looking for “long-term employees” but she’s been around and around to stores and restaurants, which she has experience working in both.
Interestingly, one of the places who was looking for “long-term employees” has had help-wanted signs up and an ad in the paper for weeks now, and still do today.
I don’t know what child labor laws are like.
Liberals want cheap labor they can feel superior to - they don’t care about teenagers. Why? Jealousy. Liberals look for their “inner child” while pretending they’re still teenagers. They don’t need competition from real young people.
Just last week I read an article that said the summer job market is strong, that there were lots of jobs for teens to chose from.
I suppose it depends on your skills.
All he had to do was stop by the 6th grade band hall and put up a poster for private lessons. Put the word out to parents that he can get their kid moved up a few parts come chair test time and he'd be flooded with students.
Immigrants are taking many jobs that used to go to young adults.
Anyone emailing this to W, or does he still have his email shut down so he won't have to deal with the citizens against his selling us out?
I did groundskeeping over several summers in high school and early college years. Guess the kids have to have parents rich enough to send them to camp or pay for unpaid internships now . . .
How many years ago was that? Around here most groundskeeping is done by guys from a certain country to the south....
I did farm work after school and during the summer when I was a teen and worked the farm full time till I was about 25 years old.
“He points to several reasons:
•Immigrants are taking many jobs that used to go to young adults.”
When I was 12-17 - I picked berries, beans, and babysat....
It was 25 or so years ago. Before the 1986 amnesty, and the 12 to 20 million illegals after . . .
It took my son a year and a half to find a job. He was working at Hometown buffet. He was hired as a dishwasher. He finally got a promotion to the bakery section, with a pay increase. He loved it, but never got trained for that job. They finally told him that they didn’t have anyone who spoke English to train him for the promotion, so they were demoting him back to dishwashing, and they took away his pay raise. He was so disgusted that he quit the job he spent a year and a half looking for.
Around my neck of the woods, there is so much work to be done that employers are begging for warm bodies to just show up.
If the job involves breaking a sweat, you won’t be seeing many of those “American Teens” doing it.
Most are spoiled, lazy and mostly skilled at text messaging and Facebook.
Growing up in South Jersey I worked summer jobs picking grapes,planting onions,picking strawberries,etc...and worked on many an egg/chicken farm. Minimum wage was $1.60 an hour and I had to go to the local elementary school for working papers.
babysat ? is that like a artichoke ?
I noticed something interesting at the Maryland and Delaware beaches over the past several Summers. Jobs that used to be filled by teens and college-agers are now held by slightly-older Eastern Eurpoeans.
It’s slightly unnerving to be in Ocean City and feel like you are in Belgrade or Minsk...
We live in a small town in NC and our son has had a very difficult time finding a summer job. He finally got an internship at the radio, but it isn’t very many hours a week. He works for the radio station at college which gave him the foot in the door.
Most of the fast food restaurants here are staffed by Mexicans and so are the lawn care services. In the past those have been prime jobs for students seeking summer employment.
Have any of these kids checked the beach resorts of the east coast? Live a few hours from Ocean City MD, and have vacationed the last couple of years on the Outer Banks of NC.
9 in 10 of the summer workers appeared to be eastern europeans teenagers.
My 15 y/o daughter took a life saving/pool mgmt class and just rec’d her first pay check. She already has a dim view of taxes :)
I worked for $1.00/hr in Yellowstone Park in the Summer of 1968 when I was 17....and my parents had to pay my way there and back, (from Washington State) AND, I had to pay room and board ($30/week, I think)....I came home with enough money to buy school clothes, and a little extra....plus some great experiences. Now, it’s mostly senior citizens who work in Yellowstone.....course they don’t party hearty like teens and college students. BUT, we did work hard!
The problem with the beach resorts in NJ and elsewhere is the desire to have the workers stay on until the week after Labor Day. Very few high school kids and virtually no college kids do so. Thus, the employers are in a bind during the last 2 weeks of August and Labor Day.
They’d rather have the eastern europeans who will stay until after Labor Day.
Any non-ag job requiring machine operation, at least in MO one would have to be 18 y/o.
Same with construction.
Why would I hire someone who will leave right after he learns enough to become marginally productive?
It's come up, but hasn't been getting a lot of press. Walter Williams had an article about it the other day.
I've been saying for some time that this is one of the worst aspects of the illegal invaders taking over entire industries.
Come to Alaska. There are more jobs to be had then people able to be employed.
Dittos. In fact one of the best paying weekend jobs for teenagers in the 60's was going around the neighborhood and mowing lawns for the old geezers on the block who didn't want to do it themselves. You could make 25 bucks a day by doing 5 lawns and you got to know your neighbors.
The snooty neighbors all had Japanese gardeners back then. Everyone else either had their kids do it, or someone else's kids do it. And we had to actually rake leaves instead of powering up some 200 decibel blower at 7:30 in the morning to blow all the leaves down the street.
“I suppose it depends on your skills.”
Other than popping pimples, what skills can a teenager be expected to have?
My teenage nieces have been teaching horseback riding to little kids for years. They have quite a business, and own their own horse.
My daughter is volunteering at the elementary school which she attended as a toddler.
I cut grass as a teen. Pulled the equipment on a trailer behind my bicycle that my Dad built for me.
My son is thrilled. Yesterday he got a job bucking bales for 10 cents a bale. He’s looking forward to earning money and getting in shape. (Hubby and I are thrilled that he’s gets to develop his work ethic!)
My husband still talks about the summer he decided to do a landscaping business. It was one of the hottest summers we ever had in our area.
My 13 year old would love to mow people's lawns, but the neighborhood is populated with Mexicans who have their own landscaping businesses.
I have an 18 year old friend who has worked since he was 16 as a sales clerk at the local BSA store. He recently started working full time and is so excited that he’s making over $11.50 per hour on his first job. This is more than some 20-something year olds are making doing retail. Even before his pay raise he was making enough that the idea of the government raising the minimum wage made him grumble.
I had no trouble finding summer jobs as a teenager, of course back then insurance companies didnt stop people from hiring people under 18 like they do now.
Interestingly, I had the same experience in Ocracoke, NC last week. The ice cream shop on the main street was staffed exclusively by young men (20-24 y.o.) from Poland (I asked). And there is a hotel in Charleston, SC where the housekeeping staff is comprised entirely of young Russian women.
I wonder how and why this is happening. It’s very odd when you first realize it.
I actually did this last year, at the ripe old age of 32. I enjoyed cutting my own grass so I put out flyers offering to do it for others in the neighborhood. I ended up getting lots of odd jobs from that flyer. I decided not to do it again this year since my wife and I had another baby and I’d rather spend time with them. I do still cut one old lady’s grass, though, because she couldn’t find anybody else to do it.
I cut, edged, trimmed and pulled weeds for $40 a lawn. You have to undercut the Mexicans on price, ya know?
I have family that has to bring adult workers from Ukraine, etc...U.S. makes it tough to hire under 18 year olds....
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