Posted on 06/11/2008 5:47:15 AM PDT by Squawk 8888
Finals week is over; summer is here. And thanks to misguided politicians, your teenager is more likely to be sitting in front of the television than waiting tables or scooping ice cream.
This year, it’s harder than ever for teens to find a summer job. Researchers at Northeastern University described summer 2007 as “the worst in post-World War II history” for teen summer employment, and those same researchers say that 2008 is poised to be “even worse.”
According to their data, only about one-third of Americans 16 to 19 years old will have a job this summer, and vulnerable low-income and minority teens are going to fare even worse.
The percentage of teens classified as “unemployed” — those who are actively seeking a job but can’t get one — is more than three times higher than the national unemployment rate, according to the most recent Department of Labor statistics.
One of the prime reasons for this drastic employment drought is the mandated wage hikes that policymakers have forced down the throats of local businesses. Economic research has shown time and again that increasing the minimum wage destroys jobs for low-skilled workers while doing little to address poverty.
According to economist David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine, for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, employment for high school dropouts and young black adults and teenagers falls by 8.5 percent. In the past 11 months alone, the United States’ minimum wage has increased by more than twice that amount.
So it should be no surprise to see teen jobs disappearing or to hear bleak testimony from employers across the country that make these hiring decisions.
In Massachusetts, the Boston Youth Fund will put 3,600 teenagers between 15 and 17 years old to work this summer, but the ratio of applicants to jobs is more than 2-to-1. The state has seen a 33 percent decline in teen employment over the past eight years. It’s no coincidence, then, that in the same time period the state’s minimum wage has soared.
In Arizona, Pledge-a-Job is a government-funded organization dedicated to increasing the number of job opportunities available to youth. But this summer, its task is a tall one. According to the group’s coordinator: “There’s no doubt about it. Summer jobs will be tough to find this year.”
And the owner of Santa Barbara Ice Creamery — what was once a go-to summer job spot for Tucson, Ariz., teens — said that because of increased wages and dairy prices, she’s only relying on a few longtime employees.
You don’t need a business degree to understand why employers are making these cuts. The classic summer jobs — cashier, waiter, grocery clerk — can help an employer with increased service or make up for full-time employees who take vacations.
When the minimum wage gets boosted, however, employers cut down on hiring teens who typically fill lower-priority slots. Most of the work still gets done, but customers may get stuck standing in longer lines, and teens suffer because they’ve been priced out of work.
There’s no end to the economic data that confirm these common-sense observations. Research from the University of Georgia, the University of Connecticut and Cornell University indicates that increasing the minimum wage causes four times more job loss for employees without a high school diploma than it does for the general population.
Furthermore, minimum wage hikes don’t effectively target the people who are typically portrayed as the key beneficiaries — low-income adults raising kids. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, just 14 percent of those who benefited from the most recent federal minimum wage hike are sole earners in families with children.
A summer job for a teen is much more than a paycheck: It’s a chance to gain important skills, increase one’s value to future employers and — just as importantly — learn what it’s like to have a job! But ill-advised policymakers are blinded by the basement salary figure instead of looking at the big picture.
Mandated wage hikes have negative consequences that too many politicians are ignoring. Hopefully some of them will discover the truth when they return home this summer to find their teenage children stuck languishing on the couch.
Kristen Lopez Eastlick is the senior economic analyst at the Employment Policies Institute, a nonprofit research organization dedicated to studying public policy issues surrounding entry-level employment.
“dude, where’s my summer job?”
blame it on the nasty, evil, heartless, mean, without-compassion republicans.
/sarcasm off/
Worried about budget deficits?
Worried about higher prices?
Worried about higher unemployment?
The Democrats relish these things. They cause them, then use them as leverage to increase their own political power.
Thanks, Democrats!
Duuude! Learn how to make change for a $0.50 drink when I hand you a dollar ... and go flip burgers!
Might also have something to do with a surplus of John McCain’s friends from south of the border.
“One of the prime reasons for this drastic employment drought is the mandated wage hikes that policymakers have forced down the throats of local businesses. Economic research has shown time and again that increasing the minimum wage destroys jobs for low-skilled workers while doing little to address poverty.”
The writer should place the blame where it belongs with the DemocRATS in congress.
Sorry, son, your summer job has been priced out of your wage scale by the minimum wage laws and given to a Mexican..............
I’ve seen no kids coming by my house to offer their services for cleaning my gutters, caulking my window seals, mow my lawn, or power wash my driveway...
Hey Kids! JOBS DON’T COME TO YOU! You FIND WORK!
Can I ask which amusement park you went to?
Thanks!
“Hey Kids! JOBS DON’T COME TO YOU! You FIND WORK!”
That’s a very good point lost on most people. Was is it about a “summer” job? Why can’t the lazy kids work all year round? You let them loaf around for 9 months of the year and then they expect someone to give them a job. Geez!
What is this “summer job” stuff? My friends and I worked throughout high-school. The hours were more during the summer but we still worked part-time through the school year.
Naturally, the Mexican-haters show up even though I seriously doubt some high-school kid has to compete with illegal labor for summer jobs. I’m reminded of the line from that South Park episode, “Thar takin’ ar JAAAAAAABS!”
This has everything to do with minimum wage, fuel costs and quite honestly, teens more concerned with playing than working.
I always there should be a “training wage” that would be given to kids under the age of 18. There are certain jobs that are never meant to be the kind of jobs to support a family on. But that would make too much sense, I guess.
D-Rats raise Min Wage, Lazy Educrats teach crap to lazy kids and both DA parties encourage Illegal Alien to take min. wage jobs for less....the perfect Lefty storm.
The minimum wage increase is part of it, but another, often ignored part is today's youth, by and large, doesn't want to work.
Every year about this time I seek out a helper for my small farm. It's just general farm work, i.e., mowing, fence maintenance, general farm upkeep, maybe some painting, helping get hay into the barn, etc. Every year I get the same result with few exceptions. I pay well, $8-10 per hour, cash, daily, with their pay depending on their age and level of experience. Every year, the same thing happens. I hire a kid to work, they get a bit sweaty the first day and quit. Either that, or they only work when I'm watching them, which defeats the purpose of hiring them in the first place. When I'm not watching, they sit down, goof off, or generally do a piss poor job.
Granted, this is anecdotal, but I've been experiencing this exact situation for at least 10 years now. Out of the past 10 summers, I've had one kid that would actually work and stuck with me all summer. He grew up on a farm, just like me. BTW, I've never, ever worked for minimum wage. When I was young and looking for summer work, I was always been able to demonstrate that I was worth more.
“Might also have something to do with a surplus of John McCain’s friends from south of the border.”
Hush! You’re not allowed to say that!
You know, I'm going to call BS on this. And all you have to do is look around and see why. What are the prime sources for summer jobs? Fast food places are one, yet if I go to any McDonald's or Wendy's or Burger King in my area they are almost completely staffed by adult Hispanics. Grocery stores? The local Hen House and Price Chopper seem to have nothing but middle-aged men and women manning their registers and bagging their groceries, and most of them seem to be recent immigrants as well. Painting houses and working lawn care used to pay for college for a lot of students, yet those areas are dominated by what appear to be recent arrivals as well. So no, I don't think that the recent minimum wage hikes are the reason. I think it's because those jobs that used to be open in the summer have been filled year 'round by people willing to work for less.
No more.
I used to pride myself in taking the roughest of material and drawing out their latent talents and getting them on the right road. Now, I just will not hire them. There is nothing to work with. Dealing with basic problems of no shows, thieves, or employees with "issues" at one time took 10 or 15 minutes in the morning. When it began to stretch into the early afternoon, I began to cut employees drastically.
Last November I did hire one. Some of my long term employees wanted extra time off for the holidays. When a friend mentioned a girl who was desperate for a job, I interviewed and hired her. Her skills were weak and her commitment such that it was obvious that she was just there for an easy paycheck. The job didn't require a lot, mainly just show up and take messages so I didn't press the issue. A week before Christmas she called in, drunk, from 200 miles away 30 minutes after she was supposed to be at work. She couldn't find her fren' for a ride back home. I canned her and damned if I didn't enjoy it. I had to fill her shift and everyone else had to rearrange their schedule and cancel plans to cover for her.
She lost her apartment and had to quit school. In her situation that probably means a lifetime of low end employment and poverty.
Tough.
Can you say ‘donde es mi trabajo?’? No? Next!
The democrats merely dream, while the republicans deliver, which is why the republicans after 11 years of control are having their brainless heads handed to them on a plater.
Interesting story, I’ve had similar experiences with younger people to include members of my own family. In my case however, I tend to forget about the good younger workers simply because they are never any problem. I have noticed though, that the kids from broken homes do not tend to be very good workers, this includes the ones from my family.
My son is fortunate to have found a good old fashioned job changing oil and tires in a privately owned service shop. I can’t express how excited I was when we found him this job. It was quite accidental and just a matter of good timing. I had helped him look for a job for months. None of the big auto parts chains, service centers or dealers will hire anyone under 18. So, off to work he goes, making $7.50/hr. He works 20-25 hours a week, year around. He brings home around $145/week or thereabouts.
The rub is, he drives a vehicle I provide him, maintain, insure and keep fuel in, else, he wouldn’t make enough to get there and back. I can do this for him and am happy to. The life experience and responsibility he is learning are lessons I am willing to pay for him to have.
The larger point is, there are beginning to be jobs out there that people can’t afford to accept.
Me too! Banking loses a $1T off the economy and we blame minimum wage? It is more likely that our problems are that there is no maximum wage for the legalized thievery at the top. In fact, in most places you cannot find someone to work for minimum wage anyway.
Ask the dims. They promised “CHANGE” in ‘06, and the job market that WAS in the longest running expansion in history DID “CHANGE.” It “CHANGED” from the longest running expasion, to LOSING jobs.
Bingo.
The Democrats still have dreams, as you point out. The Republicans haven't had much of a dream since Reagan. It's unfortunate: dreams can be useful.
Nothing to do with Mexican haters, around here (Texas) it’s almost impossible to go thru a drive-thru and hear anything but fractured spanglish.
The traditional kids’ jobs are mostly held by illegals. Fact.
You make a very good point about family. I should have included it. That was always the first thing we looked at in hiring. Good stock breeds good stock. There was a noticable change when we began dealing with the children of divorce. Now we are dealing with the children of the children of divorce. It is not pretty.
Everything mentioned in this thread is correct. Employers can’t afford to pay an unreliable or inexperienced teenager $7+ an hour to do a job that requires no skills...but they can pay an illegal immigrant $5 an hour under the table and get somebody who’s probably going to work a lot harder and not talk back. It’s a perfect storm of excessive minimum legal wages, lousy work ethic among teenagers, and a massive labor pool of unskilled and semi-skilled workers who will gladly take the burger-flipping jobs at crap wages.
}:-)4
If they have any relatives in Texas, particularly Dallas/Fort Worth, they need to spend the summer with them. There are plenty of jobs paying well above minimum wage.
Still, work is hard to find... I lived in a small town of about 1000 people, applied at pretty much every place in town, and still had to get a job outside of town, where someone would have to drive me instead of me being able to walk or bike over (I was in high school, and absolutely awful behind the wheel, so I couldn’t drive myself). Even this summer, years later, I applied at at least 10 different places, only got two interviews, and one job out of all 10 of those applications - and I’ve talked to other students, who’ve applied at upwards of 6 or 7 places, and only got one interview out of all of those.
That's a crock. You don't know what you're talking about.
Are you male of female? If you are male then offshore work that pays high is always available in the Gulf of Mexico. I did it for 5 years and saved enough money to put myself through college and get a Bachelors of Science degree in Computer Science.
I’m female (my username is actually the name of a character from the book Watership Down, so only a few people can tell from the screenname) and in any case I live nowhere near the Gulf of Mexico... although if I was male, and not prone to sunburn after 15 minutes in the New England sun in mid-April, that does sound pretty cool. As it is, I got my last-choice job but it turns out I really like it so I’m happy.
“The traditional kids’ jobs are mostly held by illegals. Fact.”
Typing “fact” after an opinion does not make it true.
“That’s a crock. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
We have here an article about how minimum wage increases have harmed teen summer employment opportunities. This was forcasted by many economists and astute FReepers.
But for some reason, some FReepers have to do away with that and blame Mexicans with a complete non-sequitor.
Now exactly what about that is a “crock”?
For example; in this small tourist town we have a large seasonal employment situation in motels, stores and restaurants. High school and college kids used to fill most of those positions. Most are now filled with illegals and some temporary visa holders.
Construction is about the only working class job to be had here. 15 years ago an experienced carpenter could easily get $15 an hour. Now he would be hard pressed to get $10 if a job was available. Meantime property values have tripled. When illegals have saturated the market in the trades do you think there will be any lower level jobs that they haven't?
Work isn’t hard to find. Good workers are hard to find. don’t forget the early bird gets the worm.
Start at the bottom. As Cap’n Ron said do a good job and you get a better one.
There’s no denying illegals are undercutting many Americans for jobs. I have seen that “20 Million” number thrown about but that would make illegals just about 7% of the population with 20% of the Mexican population living in the U.S.
I’m just not sure I buy that. Regardless, the number that are here are far too many.
My point here is it is pretty obvious that “Mexican” and “illegal” are becoming more and more synonymous around here. I doubt any FReepers go around checking papers so they don’t know who is legal and who is not.
There's a big difference between finding a job and wanting a job. A new mall just opened near me; a high-profile gourmet-burger joint there apparently had trouble finding enough staff precisely because the relatively affluent county teens would not, or need not, "stoop that low" for an income or simply have no need to. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if 2/3rds of 16-19yos are simply not particularly motivated/pressured to get one.
I seriously doubt it's a matter of not enough jobs; more likely a matter of not enough need for 'em.
Garbage. The majority of illegal aliens are Mexican. If you expect people to write an essay of caveats for each post they make to satisfy your fragile sense of the politically correct then you're nuts.
I doubt any FReepers go around checking papers so they don’t know who is legal and who is not.
I can tell very easily which Mexican immigrants are illegals. They don't dress the same, they don't act the same and they don't take the same kinds of jobs that legal immigrants do. Almost no American hispanics look, dress or act like Mexican immigrants. Perhaps both Mexicans and hispanics are new to your area. Living in CO I have known both for all of my 53 years.
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