by Shawn Yaftali ‘17

Twenty years ago, about half of all Americans between the ages of 16 and 19 had employment during the summer. Today, less than one-third of this age group will have a summer job.

This reality can be attributed to the Great Recession, an economic downturn that caused consumer spending and business investment to dry up in 2007. This caused the U.S. labor market to lose 8.4 million jobs, or 6.1 percent of all payroll employment.

Teen employment has historically followed the patterns of the market—climbing during economic booms and falling during recessions. With this trend in mind, it’s not shocking that teen employment plummeted after this recent incident. However, since hitting a low point of 29.6 percent in 2010 and 2011, teen employment has barely recovered across the nation. Summer employment rates for teens rose to just 31.6 percent last year.

Even after the economy stopped dwindling in the summer of 2009, its growth has not been nearly strong enough to create the jobs needed to keep pace with normal population growth of roughly .8 percent per year. This forces workers who’ve lost their jobs to revert to other financial means. Minimum wage positions such as cashiers and baggers, positions originally composed of teens, are now being filled by adults.

“I’ve been working [at Harris Teeter] for three years, and when I first started working here all the people in the front were teenagers, at least 21 or younger. Recently within the past year, we’ve had many older people start to work here [as those positions],” explained Vinnie Jackson, a co-manager at the local Harris Teeter.

Laid-off older workers have several qualifications that can help them win jobs when pitted against younger applicants. For instance, older folks can work long-term which leaves less holes in scheduling. More importantly, these adults have work-qualities that develop from their past experiences.

“The old adage goes, ‘You can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job,’ and that has even bigger implications now,” said Alicia Sasser Modestino, an economist at Northeastern University, in a Wall Street Journal article.

Additionally, there has been a smaller number of teens looking for work in comparison to the past. With colleges becoming harder to get into every year, many teens have been allocating time to work on resume builders such as volunteering internships.

“Being able to say that you interned for a company, especially if it’s related to your planned major, is a nice boost on college applications. While a job is useful, this is something I’ll be considering over the next few months,” said junior Brandon Lee.

With little change expected to come, there have been attempts to solve this issue on a national level. For instance, Democrat George Miller, former Representative of California, introduced the Pathways Back to Work Act of 2013 [in a previous session of Congress]. The act was proposed in order to provide subsidized employment for the unemployed, low-income adults, and both summer and year-round employment opportunities for low-income youth. However, the bill died several months later in the House of Representatives.

This issue is not getting better any time soon, so teens should expect to fill out a lot of new job applications. Finding a job while thousands of teens and adults compete at once will not be an easy feat.