Posted on 06/16/2019 2:19:02 PM PDT by Twotone
Though their population has increased, there are fewer Idaho teenagers in the workforce than there were 20 years ago. In 1998, more than 25,000 Idahoans between the ages of 14 and 18 were employed, two decades later, about 24,500 Idaho youngsters earn a paycheck, according to government data.
That four percent drop in the number of young employees today versus 1998 is amplified by the fact that Idaho’s population was 1.2 million then, and 1.7 million now. The state’s total workforce has grown by 35 percent.
And while policymakers are stoked about Idaho’s unemployment rate remaining below 3 percent, the job participation rate for Idahoans age 16-19 stands at about 41 percent.
The impact of youth unemployment on Idaho’s labor market is palpable, with consequences both immediate and long term. Today, employers are practically pleading for people to come work for them. Help wanted signs abound, but too few applicants are in the queue. Auto shops, lawn care companies, restaurants, stores, and many others worry about filling positions. Customers complain about long waits for service, but there are too few employees to respond to rising demand. More young workers could certainly help fill the gap.
Young people who stay out of the workforce until their later years arrive in the workforce lacking basic skills they should have acquired earlier in life. Employers fret about young adults they’ve hired who can’t perform menial tasks, or who can’t perform either as part of a team or independently. Such employees either won’t remain employed or will be the first on the chopping block when the labor market invariably contracts. Lacking a job, these skill-free teens will be the first to sign up for government entitlement programs.
(Excerpt) Read more at idahofreedom.org ...
If a high school students wants to go to college and get into a good college he/she must do hundreds of hours of volunteer work. Plus they need to either play a sport, play in the band or orchestra, take AP and honors classes and keep their grades up. It’s hard for them to work and do all the volunteer work too.
Because their parents want to be their friends rather than their parents.
Because they can’t get their noses out of their phones long enough to work.
My dad was a contractor too. As a little kid I would be out at his projects. One of my jobs starting when I was REALLY little was to rescue bricks that the brick layers had dropped. “Each one is about 25 cents - if you saw a quarter on the ground you’d pick it up - right?”
Another job I had was to straighten out bent nails. It was only years later that I figured out that was just to keep me busy!
Scrapping drywall off the base flooring. “You may think this is a lousy job - but it’s probably the most important job to do on the whole site. If you don’t get it all up and nice and smooth, the final flooring will move, the nails will work out, and the floor will squeak. That’s the main fault that people will notice.”
One of my early jobs was to sort out the lumber that arrived on site as to what was straight or not. And the warped stuff got sent back. I probably did that for 8 years during the summers. Early on there were the few odd boards that got sent back. Those later years, I bet 1/3 of the load would get sent back! I think my dad said they didn’t have the big trees like they used to have.
As a kid (and the son) I got all of the menial tasks. Hot dusty drywall scraping. Digging a drainage ditch in the rain. Building retaining walls with the gooey black tar getting all over you.
Every time he’d come over and see how things were going he’d say “Well - now you know what you don’t want to do when you grow up!”
Hubby felt sorry for one of the employees because her husband left her and she said the kids were hungry. She was asking around to mow yards. First day, she lasted five minutes and left. A couple days later she said she’d finish but lasted another five minutes. Hmm, I can see why her husband dumped her and why kids don’t take on summer or after school jobs.
My job was manual labor. Breaking up concrete curbing with a 16 pound hammer and loading the chunks into a tractor bucket. Working a shovel in dirt eight hours a day. Shoveling ‘mud’ as the redi-mix cement trucks poured the gravelly slush out into the formed areas.
When I first began, I was paid twelve and a half cents an hour, IIRC, which apparently was union wage at the time. Yikes.
One hand is likely wrapped around something else...
I agree with that assessment. Add into it the kids who are traded during the summer months to a noncustodial parent or grandparents and shorter summer breaks and it becomes difficult to line much up in the summer. I add that I grew up in Idaho and worked. I first hired myself out to pick potatoes at age eight. (I’ve since realized the farmer who hired me and my partner probably had a good laugh at us trying to fill and dump 50-lb baskets of potatoes into gunny sacks intended to hold two full baskets. The payrate was $.06 per 100-lb bag and we worked diligently for about fourteen hours and earned $1.63 apiece.) Later I babysat, continued working in the harvest, was a filing clerk and as assistant bookkeeper. My sister worked at a drive-in movie taking tickets. My little brother moved irrigation pipes. Work was ingrained by our parents and we are very thankful for that training and family culture. None of us has ever been on welfare or without jobs for more than a couple of weeks. One is fully retired and I and my little brother are semi-retired. We are all financially comfortable but not rich, except in honor, family, faith, love, respect and memories.
There is no reason to work when Mom & Dad give you everything. In my day you wanted a car you had to earn the money to buy a used jalopy and then to gas it. If you were lucky dad would add you to the insurance.
Also in my day you could work for a year and full summers at minimum wage or with tips and save and make a substantial dent in college tuition. Now there is no motivation to do that because school have jacked tuition to $50k per year so a part time job doesn’t earn much beyond pocket spending money. So why bother?
When I was 16 I wanted to work. Kept up the rusty used car, money for clothes, albums, entertainment and other assorted stuff. Sponging off my widowed Mom for anything wasn’t even a thought. No work= no money, simple as that, end of story.
But even back then, very few of my classmates worked summers much less evenings during the school year.
Both parents in most cases had this damned stupid idea that if their little darlings focused on school, and then were pushed academically through college smoked dope and chased sexual conquests while being indoctrinated into Marxism they would still suddenly develop a work ethic in their twenties.
This can't be turned around unless both parents get their offspring usefully occupied early on.
Don't try to pawn this off as if only the extreme end produced the results we are seeing writ large. Plenty of people who I grew up with have still never held the same job for a decade. They never developed the discipline to get up even when they don't feel good.
The laws are legitimate and designed to not only keep kids out of dangerous manufacturing facilities such as auto stamping plants where I worked in but hopefully to keep them in school........
You want to give them job experience, open up more trade classes in high school and trade schools following graduation.
There is absolutely no benefit whatsoever in offering incentives to a kid to drop out of high school and go to work in either your mills, coal mines or manufacturing plants........
Growing up in Virginia in the 1960s, I had a work permit at age 14. I helped install TV antennas and deliver washers and dryers for a local appliance company. Now, you have to be 18 to do such “dangerous” jobs. Before that, I had a newspaper route and mowed lawns. Today, in my neighborhood newspapers are delivered by adults driving cars, and homeowners contract with landscaping services. Teenage girls have it a bit easier, as there are still some babysitting gigs, but today there are many fewer babies that need sitting!
Not strictly on topic but I actually saw one of the t shirts on a female college student in Michigan :
(Map of state of Idaho on shirt)
Under it: Idaho?
No. You da ho.
My first job was with the city of Rockville MD when I was 11. $1.41 an hour to keep a pool locker room clean
I joined in my Junior Year,
GED and Air Force Radio Man!
I escaped also,
Three hots and a Cot
Looked real good to me.
You left out one thing: When all else fails, they’ll vote for those who will use the force of government to steal it for them.
I was curious as to what job I could get in the Navy,
so I stopped by the recruiter and asked. He gave me a battery of tests to take, then handed me some more paperwork to sign, and since I was already filling out stuff, I did. Heh.
When I got home, I said, “Dad, I’ve joined the Navy.”
Oops,
The Recruiter screwed Me!
Where have I heard That?
Lawyers!
Too fat with a chair stuck around their azz.
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