My son is on his first summer job. He is learning life skills. He’s majoring in aerospace engineering and working for a home remodeler.
The tool and problem solving skills will help him in his work. Plus, he’ll be able to fix his own house.
My kids always worked when they were teens but the jobs they held don’t exist any more or are filled by illegals - pumping gas and checking oil level in service stations, mowing yards, newspaper route, washing cars, groundskeeper at local golf course, grocery sackers.
My son had two jobs last summer... a landscaping/nursery and private landscaping (from two older couples who liked him and needed work done). This summer, he has 3... Five Guys, private landscaping and a counselor for a young kid’s camp. Each job has taught him valuable life lessons about dealing with people, finance and has established quite a good work ethic. (very proud of him.. can you tell?!
Goldberg misses the obvious reason...illegal aliens are taking most of the low-paying “entry level” jobs throughout the country.
A-I’m a-gonna raise a fuss
I’m a-gonna raise a holler
Learned more about life from them drunks and mobsters in one month, then most would learn in a lifetime.
” ... the idea that the minimum wage — at least for young workers — should be a ‘living wage’ is absurd.”
The fundamental problem with trying to use an increase in the minimum wage to alleviate poverty is that (1) most minimum-wage workers aren’t poor and (2) most poor people don’t work, at least in the legal sector covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act.
I first noticed this in Ocracoke, on the Outer Banks, 15 years ago. The kids working at the ice cream stand were all from Romania. I also noticed that most of the summer help (housekeepers, parking valets) at our favorite Charleston, SC hotel were Russian. I asked the (American) night manager why, and he said that the U.S. college students have to leave in early August to get ready to go back to college, when there is at least another month of summer vacation demand to accommodate.
Summer jobs bring job skills and experience.
Job skills and experience lead to better jobs.
Better jobs lead to more money and a greater ability to form stable families.
More money and a greater ability to form stable families dramatically reduces the chances for dependency.
Reducing dependency disempowers “progressives”.
Therefore, we must destroy the summer job to get rid of the problem at the root.
Stonewall was probably closed when he sold Love Bites. It was probably Marie’s Crisis.
Add to that a $15 minimum wage, child labor laws that strictly limit their work hours and slap employers with hefty fines for being even one minute over, TJTC tax credits that incentivize the hiring of adults, and tort law that keeps shutting down swimming pools and other places of youth employment....
Living in a university town, there are tons of research jobs. My son got one last summer and he is still doing it a year later.
A lot of today’s teens have no work ethic. Even if they get a small part-time job they usually don’t last long. They’ll say up front they are willing to work certain days but the first time they are scheduled and a friend is having a party they whine about working.
I work at a small pizza place with many 16-18 years olds and we lose many this way. They are wide-eyed and eager when applying for the job but once the work is required they get bored and want to go hang out with their friends.
Frankly this was the same back in my college days with students 18-20 years old in the late 70’s. “What, I have to work the night of Jim’s keg party?”
But on the other hand there are plenty that want the job and pick up the slack.
My college-student son works in a grocery store; he also took the summer term at school.
The teenagers are Boy Scout camp counselors. Hopefully they can both get some of the year-round lifeguard jobs which will be opening up as the summer workers go back to college.