May 7, 2012

Summer jobs not always a breeze for teens

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With the end of the school year coming up for college and high school students, the yearly ritual of parents everywhere will soon begin in earnest: getting their teenage sons and daughters off the couch and into a summer job. Traditionally, this is a simple battle of wills -- determining what force is needed to dislodge unmotivated teens from their video game terminals and just get them out of the house for a few hours.

In recent years, however, this problem is more about cold, hard numbers and the overall economy. Summer jobs, once thought to be so plentiful (if not exactly demanding or lucrative), are becoming harder to find for the nation's young adults come Memorial Day.

In a recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly 25 percent of the 16- to 19-year-olds in the national workforce currently hold jobs. Five years ago, that figure was at 35 percent, and for most of the relatively prosperous 1980s and 1990s it held steady between 40 and 50 percent.

Most of the blame for this sharp rise in teen unemployment has been placed on the lingering echoes of the Great Recession. In Washington state, the unemployment rate for the 16-to-19 demographic was 17.6 percent in 2007, according to Gov. Chris Gregoire's office. By 2010, it nearly doubled to 34.1 percent and now stands at about 31 percent.

While some organizations, such as job outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, say the slowly recovering economy will bode well for young workers this summer, other groups, including the Employment Policies Institute, have blamed high-minimum-wage mandates in states such as Washington ($9.04 as of Jan. 1) as one of the main culprits for what it expects to be another lackluster summer for teen job seekers.

Compared with the loss of so many other permanent, living-wage jobs over the last few years, this lack of summer work may seem like small change in the grand scheme of economic recovery. Why should we care if a few sullen teens have trouble finding a few dead-end fast-food or retail jobs before their next semester begins?

Well, for starters, a lack of these "starter jobs" can have a cascading negative effect on budding young careers. Increased competition has placed a high premium on experience of any kind in the labor pool. So without these jobs, many high school and college students may have no experience at all by the time they graduate, making it that much harder to get a foot in the door as they enter the professional world.

As Gregoire's office mentioned in its Jobs for Washingtonians policy brief: "Such deep and long-lasting unemployment among our young people robs them of the chance to begin developing basic job skills they need for long-term success, and may limit their long-term earnings."

To help the Puget Sound region's young people locate the dwindling number of jobs available, several organizations are offering programs to give teenagers a boost this summer, providing them vital work experience and developing key job skills that will build a foundation for more permanent positions.

Here are just a few examples from the city of Seattle's Teen Careers page:

• Center for Career Alternatives -- Provides free education, employment, training and career-development services to more than 15,000 residents of King and Snohomish counties.


• Cool Works -- A clearinghouse for fun seasonal work at national parks and other recreational areas in the Northwest and all over the United States.


• Teens in Public Service -- A listing of summer internships for teens interested in serving their communities.


• Youth at Work -- This program of the Workforce Development Council for Seattle-King County helps link young people with various seasonal jobs and internships.

Randy Woods writes about job-search tools, networking techniques and other tips to help you land your dream job.

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entry-level, experience, internships, seasonal hiring, teenagers

1 Comments

City On A Shining Hill on May 13, 2012 9:55 PM | Reply

Three reasons exist for the dearth of jobs:

1. The state's minimum wage law is keeping employers from hiring more teens, especially in fast food, janitorial, retail stores and other sources of income that traditionally teens have had success in.

2. Labor and Industry rules, which prevent teens from working full time. This is true for farm workers in Eastern Washington. Clint Diedler, a farmer who ran for political office recently, mentioned the reason that farmers are not hiring local teens is due to this strange rule. Foreign workers, who often don't fall under these laws, are preferred by farmers and paid around 6-9 an hour, skirting the rule. Stangley, agriculture in our state is exempt from paying state taxes. I contacted several state politicians and heard nothing back about this issue.

3. The rising cost of health care premiums for full time employees, for those businesses which cover their workers. Our state restricts out of state insurers, keeping prices high for the few allowed to do business in our state. With the new health care law, employers of more than 50 workers will need to cover their employees, thus, the lack of hiring!

So folks, having progressive state (and national) government policies is moving our state and nation toward Greece-style unemployment and increasing poverty. We get whom we vote for!

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