Posted on 12/14/2013 9:38:53 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The employment rate among teenagers is incredibly dismal. I know this firsthand, since I have teens at home and teenage nieces and nephews who cannot find work. There’s an irritating theme that runs through family conversations about our unemployed teens, and the words I hear most often are “lazy” and “entitled.”
“I had a paper route when I was their age,” one of the older members of the family will tell me every time we get together. “They need to get out and hustle. Walk the neighborhood, mow lawns, weed gardens. There’s lots of jobs out there for teens.”
“They should get roofing jobs,” another family member exclaimed. “When I was a teenager in high school, the dreamiest guys were the summertime roofers since they had the most gorgeous tans. And they had the best bodies, too!”
The attitude towards teens today is one of disdain for the luxuries they enjoy and their lack of a good work ethic. Teens are spoiled, lazy, and unwilling to work hard. Do you believe this?
Listen up, older people. The world isn’t the same now as it was then, and that’s not good. Not good for our teens and not good for our future. The days of the paper route are gone. Here are the three reasons why teens can’t get jobs today, and why this is terrible for America.
1. High unemployment
Unemployment among adults is reportedly at 7.3% but is actually much higher. The real unemployment figures are probably as high as 14%.
Your teen is competing with adults for that first job. Teenagers have few skills, an undeveloped work ethic, and no experience. The adults looking for the same work are experienced, they have communication skills, and they’re desperate. Employers aren’t in the market of giving out charity jobs to inexperienced teens who haven’t figured out how to show up to work on time. They need good workers and they need them immediately. They have them. They have more than they need. Your teen doesn’t have a chance, and the employment figures show it. The teenage unemployment rate is a staggering 24%.
2. Illegal immigrants take jobs “Americans just won’t do.”
I live in Colorado. If you want your lawn mowed, you call a service and once a week a truck will unload two or three incredibly hard-working Hispanics who will mow, weed, and cart off the grass clippings in less than an hour.
You don’t have to deal with a lazy American kid who pauses in the middle of the job to set up a different playlist on his iPod. No haphazard weeding or indifferent weed-wacking. No missing a mowing day because they’re sick or have other plans.
This Mayhem advertisement is your worst nightmare of a lawn-mowing teenager:
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
Then there are roofers. Instead of the high schoolers who once filled this industry, hammering their thumbs, spilling roofing tacks, and working on their tans during every possible break time, you have a team of men who show up, work hard, eat their lunches quietly under the shade of your tree, and finish the job in a single day.
House painting was once a favorite summertime occupation for teenagers and college kids. That’s gone. Carpet installation? Gone. My brothers once spent a summer painting telephone poles with creosote to preserve them. Gone. All of these jobs are filled with immigrants, many of them illegal, who get paid much less than teens, do an excellent job, and complain not at all.
3. Minimum wage has destroyed the lower rungs of the ladder to success.
Menial construction labor, like carting off small debris from a construction floor or sweeping it, doesn’t deserve minimum wage. It barely requires brain cells at all, which means it’s a perfect entry-level job for a teenager who has no developed work ethic, no skills, and no experience. But minimum wage laws require a company to pay far more than these jobs are worth, so companies have removed these jobs altogether. They’ll hire a service instead, or have one of their more highly skilled workers spend time on these tasks.
When my brother worked for a fast food chain (Mr. Clown) in high school, the manager employed a whole crew of high school students who were assigned dinky shifts at odd times. There’s no way this could support someone as a “living wage.” The purpose was to have lots of backup for teenagers who hadn’t figured out how to show up to work on time. If a teenager missed more than a few shifts, he was reluctantly fired. After the teen realized he really liked the spending money, he’ go to work at the other fast food chain right down the street (Mr. Crown), and eventually develop the skills he needed to keep a job. This low step on the ladder of success has been removed because of high minimum wage laws. If you don’t have the skills to do a good job, you’re not hired. Teens most often do not have those skills, and now they aren’t given the chance to learn them. Brad Hamilton of Fast Times at Ridgemont High doesn’t get hired as a fast food worker any more, not even one dressed as a pirate.
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
High unemployment, illegal immigration, and the minimum wage have destroyed the labor market for teenagers, and this is terrible. Why?
Why do our teens need jobs?
Teenagers need a job because they need practice. They’re not worth very much as workers. They’re lazy, scatterbrained, unable to remember instructions, and have no calluses on their soft hands. So really, why would anyone want to hire these unformed humans and begin the arduous process of turning them into skilled and eager workers?
Because our very future depends on it.
How did the hard workers of my parents’ generation and our generation become that way? They began as teenagers have throughout human history, by working with adults and learning from them. Don’t be fooled by their boastful memories. They started out just as lazy as our teenagers today. I guarantee you there were Lakota Indian teens who had to be rolled out of their warm buffalo hides on a chilly morning to go deer hunting. Skills, work ethic, the profound satisfaction of doing a job well — these are all learned. They don’t come as if by magic to teenagers. They have to be taught by adults.
Our culture has removed this important step from our teenagers’ lives and that harm carries from their teen years into their professional future. My brother interviews job applicants who have graduated from college and has expressed profound worries about the abilities of these newly minted professionals. They don’t understand how to come in to work on time, how to stay at work all day, how to focus on a task and complete it. They’re more worried about their social media, their benefits package, and their workplace. Mark Bauerlein of Bloomberg News writes: “In the 2011 survey, 40 percent of employers cited ‘inadequate basic employability skills’ as a reason for why they can’t hire and keep workers.” They have no work ethic. They’re stunted.
Teens need to learn the joy to be found in hard work. They need to work on a roofing crew all summer and bandage blisters on their hands. They need to wipe down a diner counter after closing time with their feet aching. They need, desperately, to linger over a broom and watch a skilled glazer or bricklayer move through their task with such grace that it gives them goosebumps. Our teens need these experiences. They need to know the satisfaction of doing hard work and earning money for it and feeling that glow inside them that means they’ve accomplished something. We are failing our entire society by not providing it for them, and we are depriving our teenagers of the tools they need to succeed in their adult lives.
We need to make those first steps on the economic ladder available to our teenagers, those lazy, entitled, scatterbrained darlings. They don’t stay that way long, if they’re just given a chance:
My son Tom at 18.
I always hired teens to come into my child care center after school so that teachers could leave. They loved sitting down and playing, talking and watching the 2 1/2 through 5 year olds. The school age kid usually took to them too.
The economy has been worsening so it is not surprising. Jobs have been off shored as well.
Another thing is that too many old people aren’t able to retire. In the past the elderly would retire and open up jobs for young workers. Now the young people have to wait for the old folks to drop dead.
“But there are still yard firms, gutter cleaning firms, etc. that love to hire young people.”
I wish. My Parents and Sister are in North Carolina, and the only people I’ve seen working for their associations have been Mexicans.
I live in an apartment in Oakland, California. All the building maintenance is done by Mexicans.
My first paid “job” was on the family farm. I had to laugh at the description from the article about the Lakota teen being rolled out of the Buffalo hide in the morning.
In the morning during the Summer “bean walking” season, my Dad would wake me up at the crack of dawn with “you’re missing the best part of the day!” NOT SO MUCH...LOL! Because we started at 6:00 AM...me and a group of my “town” friends...we got to knock off around Noon when it started to get too hot. That was my only paid job on the farm, as I helped to assemble crew...I think he thought it would be bad form to pay my friends, and not me.
I desperately wanted to be the “cool girl” with the Lifeguard job, and even got certified...but between the farm and sports, that was not to be.
My husband worked at two or three fast food jobs before he was 16; in a food distribution warehouse from 16-18; and then worked as a “helper” to a carpet installer, where he learned a valuable trade that came in handy in his early 20’s.
He went on to sales, and finally started his own business. I went to College (where I worked three different jobs...each better than the last); then went into sales; and now work in our business.
There is LOT to be gained when kids have the opportunity to learn job skills.
This may exaggerate a bit, but it describes well how adults think of teenage workers with that special teenage attitude.
Allstate Insurance ad, "Mayhem":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pScMugoP5v8
The second video is a scene from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, with Joe Walsh singing "Waffle Stomp."
The store owner/manager is a jerk, but if you are trying to build a business brand... He is a lot more sympathetic to me now than he would have been when I was in high school.
I started working summers when I was 15. Full time at 18.
My 2 nephews who went to college and are good at computers and graphics have not had a full time job yet and they are 22! Not even a part time one till this year.
Their mother got one to help part time in the company she works at just this summer....
I told both they could do what I do which is help desk work. Starting out pay depends on what you know and where you work but I make over $25/hr and all I do is answer a phone (maybe a bit more...).
They laughed just thinking to do such a job. I have co-workers who are around 30 and making starting pay of about $20/hr. I wish I made that at that age.
4 years of college and no job. Their mom a conservative and their dad a very big liberal.
No. First of all, once you legalize existing illegals, this only opens the floodgates for the next batch of illegals. Second, this segment of labor force is already saturated.
Let me focus on that issue. Every society has jobs at different levels. For example: one king, one hundred courtiers, 10,000 aristocrats, and 1,000,000 peasants. This ratio is defined by the demand for those services. In today's society you may need 20% of engineers, 20% of medical workers, 10% of soldiers, 20% of manufacturing workers, and so on. Each of these layers is fixed in size, and the size is slowly changing over time. The country had slots for steel mill workers many years ago. Today those slots are gone. Instead we have slots for microwave RF engineers who are experienced in hybrid IC design, for example. There is a huge chasm between these occupations.
However the teens, and the majority of immigrants (except those who come with foreign diplomas and experience) are unable to work in high-tech areas. Not only they are unable to work there today; they cannot be even taught that at the workplace. You have to study this stuff in a university, and you'd better be good at it. Modern industry, modern technology requires knowledge of very complex stuff - advanced math, analog RF, quantum physics, cryptography, chemistry, materials science, computer science, and much more. This is what IBM Research and the like are doing; and they always could use more geniuses, if you happen to find them.
At the same time the number of low end jobs is shrinking. They are either obsoleted entirely (like those steel workers,) or they are replaced by machines (CNC mills and lathes,) or efficiency of their labor is so high that fewer workers are needed. In ten years from how we will have self-driving cars. Imagine what will that do to the professional drivers. What remains more or less stable is pure manual jobs, like roofing and weed-whacking. But they do not grow - there is a finite number of houses in the country, and a finite number of consumers of those services. Furthermore, growing unemployment creates positive feedback: if you cannot go to the factory and mill a part to earn a dollar, you cannot spend this dollar later on to buy a grass mowing service. You'd do it yourself; so it's not one job that is gone now, but something like 1.05 jobs. You stopped eating at a restaurant? It's 1.10 jobs now. Stopped going to theaters? 1.15 jobs gone. Unemployment trickles down.
One can come to a simple conclusion here. There are too few low end jobs in the country, because there are only so many lawns to mow. If a teen wants to get a job, he'd better be a very smart guy... right out of the school. He'd better be able to do a very complex work, like designing modern products that can compete with Chinese devices. There is a hope that at that level he will find a job. But if he can't work a 3D CAD... what can I use him for, were I a manufacturer of such devices? I could use a tech, as an example, who is intimately familiar with 0201 and 0402 SMD and can install and remove them all day long. How many teens can do this and want to do this? How many of them are even psychologically prepared for working from 9 to 5 without listening to their iPods?
From the point of view of the market, the illegals are simply competing for the same jobs that teens need to get started. Illegals are winning because they are better in most aspects. The market is a mindless force; it does not care that it's not ethical to give the job to an illegal; all it cares that your business would be better off with an adult. A business owner will always have this pressure; some will resist, others will not; some even cannot resist, otherwise they won't survive.
One solution to that would be to provide the able teens with university-grade education, for low cost or for free, as they did in USSR. Note that USSR did not really educate them for free; the graduates had to work for some years at select factories before they were able to quit and move on. High cost of education may be the Achilles' heel of the USA because it artificially limits the number of workers that are in highest demand today. The country does not need another ten millions of ditch diggers; however a million of brain surgeons, or 10,000 rocket scientists, or 10 million good programmers would be able to create products and services that the entire world would want to pay for. Nobody wants to buy labor of a US ditch digger or lawn mower. Only those jobs will grow that are valuable on the international market. Unfortunately, education is extremely - and, perhaps, unreasonably - expensive. A country without a large number of highly educated citizens is usually called a 3rd world country.
Three reasons? There's one reason: minimum wage.
Now I'll go read it! {^)
It's amazing isn't it? I wanted to work, and all of the College Profs recommended having a job during school, just so we would have something for our resumes. My first job out of College (took the first one I could get) was a straight commission sales job...it was probably the most "valuable" thing that I did.
Looking back, I realize how little I knew about the business world when I graduated.
At that first "real" job, I learned how to sell, and made today's equivalent of $50,000 my first year; thought I had hit the lottery. Took that experience, and kept moving on and up until I was eventually traveling all over the country as a sales manager.
Something is wrong, and I think that this author has a lot of it right for many kids. Getting that paycheck when I was first working was a big deal, and a motivation to figure out how to earn more.
I will say this however: Ever increasing taxes and fees, wildly increasing health insurance premiums, etc. are enough to discourage even the hardest workers and business owners. I work 60 hours per week or more; watching lazy slobs reap the rewards of my hard work is NOT particularly fulfilling.
Also, we wouldn't have one fraction of the illegal immigration problem we have if it wasn't for minimum wage requirements. That minimum wage those hard-working Mexicans earn and generally send back home, may not be much to an American kid, but it's good money in a place where plenty are living in cardboard villages.
Government regulation from all directions mangles and frustrates prosperity. Worse, government regulation strangles morality and creates dependent/entitlement expectations. Hack government regulation back to minimal basics, restore freedom, and watch commerce thrive. Truly, we could live in a fabulous place if people could become entrepreneurs more easily.
thank you for that reply
Yeah I’m in WA as well and ...when I was a youngster is so different as to be undecipherable as a world view 2013.
I picked strawberries. I picked raspbrries, cukes, worked in the high school offices under work study programs, all at the same time because I wanted more money than crops could bring me, but then there were the canneries and I worked there too at night because I WANTED to go to college and that’s how I could pay my way!
Well, more immigrants are coming, and a higher minimum wage is coming. So what are you teens going to do about it?
Sit???!!!!!!! Whine?!!!!!
Steal the job! Fight.
An interview with Oprah aint going to get you anything.
Being a boomer, there were so many of us that few found work. A fast food job was coveted and required a bit of parental influence in the community.
I found work in fruit harvests and out picked the illegals.
The number of teenagers who have knocked on my door to ask me if I needed anyone to mow my lawn, spray my weeds, shovel my driveway, clean my house, fix things which are broken: ZERO!
I began working when I was 12. I cut three lawns in the summer, and shoveled three driveways in the winter. In addition, I secured a paper route, and fixed bicycles.
When I turned 16, I had every penny of the $1000 purchase price of my first car (used), a 1968 Dodge Superbee.
Like I said, no teenagers have knocked on my door looking for work, which I would gladly give them at the right price. I have more than enough to do.
I mowed lawns. I caddied lying about my age to start a year sooner then I should have. I carried double bags. After a day on the course I walked the fields and scouted the streams searching for golf balls. Found dozens which I would clean up and sell. I dug ditches for a farmer. On garbage day I searched for bike parts. I gathered parts (for free) and buiplt bikes, only needing at most to buy tires and would sell them. If you want to work and make money you will. It might not be the best job the cleanest job nit may not have insurance etc. But you can always find something that will put some money in your pocket if you really really want to!
I have had a job of one sort or another since I turned 15. In the 3 years after I would become employed at no less than 16 places. Jobs were so plentiful all one had to do was walk in, fill out an application, get an interview, sometimes on the spot and virtually guaranteed to be hired. I’m 42 now and ready to retire! Feel pretty stagnant at current company of 23 years. Don’t have the career of my dreams because I never could decide which route to go in college:(
Bump
Huh?
The article makes that exact point.
Every month I cut a B of A bill payment to the Whatsit Hill Condominium Trust. The lawns get mowed and the leaves get blown. By illegales! But do I care? Hell no! Even if I get nominated to be AG or such, there will only be my naive check to the the HOA to be discovered. What's not to like?
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