The summer job, redefined

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Up next: The summer slump.

In the 1970s, 60% of American teens had summer jobs. By last year, that number had dropped to just about one-third.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Teenagers around the country say they’re still applying for jobs, but not getting hired. So they’re finding other ways to fill their time; volunteering, studying, and even starting their own businesses.

WORLD’s Lauren Smyth investigates the teen labor market.

LAUREN SMYTH: Sixteen-year-old Trevor Pennington wants to work. He applied for a job at a pizza shop in Jackson, Michigan. But it’s been weeks, and he hasn’t heard back.

PENNINGTON: A lot of people are trying to get jobs at the same time, and it’s just hard to find them.

For Trevor and other Michigan teens, the job market is tough this year. Nearly 20% of kids who want to work say they can’t find a job. That’s far above the overall unemployment rate of 4.2%.

CLARK: There’s just so much more to the story than this clean simple story of “teens want work and they can’t find it.”

Michael Clark is an economist at Hillsdale College and the father of two teens. He can think of plenty of reasons why teens might have a hard time finding jobs—minimum wage laws, strict regulations on hiring minors, and a cultural belief among hiring managers that younger generations are lazy. 

But Clark sees something more.

CLARK: We are wealthier … So the difference there is, they’re looking for a job, so they show up unemployed, but the reality is they’re looking for a job and they’re much pickier.

Teens who can’t find jobs that suit their preferences may choose to spend their summers volunteering, pursuing extracurriculars, or traveling with family. But what about the ones who really want to work?

CLARK: Everything pushes in one area and it has to come out somewhere else, right? And so we’re getting these substitutions all over the place, and some of that is going to be entrepreneurial.

Back to Trevor. Earlier this summer, he got a call from his friend, Fionn McEnany-Vanderwood, who had started a business washing windows and wanted to hire Trevor.

PENNINGTON: Well, I didn’t know I was doing this today, but when I did, I was all in for it, because it just seems like a good thing to do, and something to learn and experience.

Fionn is sixteen. He used to spend his summers working at local businesses.

FIONN: And one thing I noticed is that a lot of people, they show up and they get the work done, and then they go home, and it’s kind of the same thing on a day-to-day basis.

He didn’t like that routine—and he’s not the only one. Junior Achievement USA found nearly 60% of teens said they wanted to start their own businesses. Like Fionn, some wanted the freedom to develop their creative interests. Others wanted a quicker path to financial independence.

Matthew Ganaway is Fionn’s other employee. He has three jobs in total, because:

GANAWAY: I love seeing people make money, I love helping 'em, and I love making money, which is even more important.

Matthew considers himself employed. But what about Trevor and Fionn?

HERSHBEIN: If you babysit once or twice a week, do you have a job? Are you employed? Some people may say yes, some people may not.

That’s Brad Hershbein, senior economist at Michigan’s Upjohn Institute. He says teen employment rates are typically measured with self-reported survey data. Actual employment rates may be much higher than those surveys suggest.

Among adults, unemployment correlates strongly with a decline in both mental and physical health. Hershbein says that’s usually not true for teens. Still...

HERSHBEIN: When youth are employed, they’re less likely to get in trouble. And we know that there have been studies that demonstrate that is particularly true in terms of criminal activity—it goes down when youth have job opportunities and they learn these skills, and they have companionship too.

Glacial Gleam hasn’t quite caught on yet, but Fionn isn’t discouraged.

FIONN: Never give up, because in the end, learning and getting better at something, it's a roller coaster. You're going to have really high highs, you're going to have really, really low lows. You're going to have to look past those low lows and high highs and determine the future to what best suits you to do.

For many teens like Fionn, interest in entrepreneurship will continue into adulthood. About a quarter of young adults consider themselves entrepreneurs, and another quarter plan to start their own business soon.

For WORLD, I’m Lauren Smyth in Jackson, Michigan.

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