Organizations may end up hurting themselves in the long run if the slumping teen job market -- with the exception of hospitality and tourism -- continues to lag. The tendency to hire immigrants, college-age students and older adults leaves little room for teenagers, who need those summer jobs to learn how to become good employees.

By Marlene Prost

Unless they want to wait tables or work at theme parks, many teenagers will have trouble finding a job this summer.

There will always be jobs for teens in tourism, entertainment and hospitality, industries that depend on temporary workers in the vacation months. But in general, teens have been hit even harder than their parents by the sluggish economy.

Last summer's teen job market was the worst on record since World War II, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. And this summer will be worse.

The news is not only bad for teens. It should also disturb employers, because summer jobs train the workers of tomorrow.

"The less experience they have with realistic work experience when teenagers, the more likelihood they'll have to learn those lessons in life. It's better to have that lesson when you're 16 than 30," says Cynthia Marcotte Stamer, a labor and employment attorney with Glast, Phillips & Murray in Dallas.

There are still lots of summer jobs, according to a CareerBuilder.com survey done by Harris Interactive, which did not touch on the issue of age. Nearly one-quarter (23 percent) of some 3,100 hiring managers said they will hire seasonal workers this year and another 14 percent are considering hiring.

Of those employers, two-thirds said the summer jobs could lead to permanent work. Most of these jobs are in office support, followed by customer service, landscape/maintenance, research, restaurant/food service, construction/ painting and sales.

"There are certainly some challenges, but they still need to recruit, and some will recruit [teens]," says Jennifer Grasz, spokesperson for CareerBuilder.com, based in Chicago.

"To be honest with you, I believe you're always going to have a certain percentage of the market that prefers to hire teens" for seasonal work in areas such as tourism and entertainment, says Patricia Mathews, president of Workplace Solutions, an HR consulting firm in St. Louis.

"I always look at it as a win/win," she says. Teens cost less per hour, they don't need benefits, and they bring a unique enthusiasm to the job.

Teens Suffer Most

Tourism aside, however, the summer job market for teens is abysmal, according to an April research report by the Center for Labor Market Studies.

This summer, the employment rate for teenagers is forecasted to be 34 percent, the worst in 60 years, states the report, which blames the administration and U.S. Congress for letting funding for teen jobs programs die in 2000.

"We've tried to argue in favor of refunding summer federal jobs. We thought we were close this year," says Joseph McLaughlin, co-author of the report, referring to efforts to add $1 billion for youth jobs to bills such as the Summer Jobs Stimulus Act of 2008.

States with the highest teen employment are South Dakota, Wyoming, North Dakota, Minnesota and Nebraska, McLaughlin says. At the bottom are Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, California and Louisiana.

Why is teen employment sinking?

There are several reasons. The retail, manufacturing and construction industries -- which have traditionally hired teens to fill in when full-time employees take vacations -- have been hit hardest by the economic downturn.

In addition, teenagers are competing with three groups that are considered more experienced, more reliable and more flexible: recent immigrants, college-age adults and seniors.

Plus, work hours and duties for teenagers are restricted under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Children under 14 are generally prohibited from nonagricultural work, and teens ages 16 and 17 cannot operate certain power-driven machinery. Teens ages 14 and 15 are limited to a certain number of hours. Sixteen-year-olds cannot drive on the jobs, while 17-year-olds can only drive in daylight for limited times.

Recent immigrants, especially those with low skills, are taking entry-level jobs. They can work longer hours and they often are part of a network of workers, McLaughlin says. At the same time, many older adults are taking jobs to stay active or make ends meet, while recent college grads or adults in their early 20s are holding onto their old summer jobs.

So Why Hire Teens?

The teen work crisis isn't just depriving kids of pocket money; it's hurting society, because teenagers are not learning how to work, some experts say.

"A lot of my clients express frustration that they're more babysitters than employers" for workers in their 20s, Stamer says. "[These workers] lack a work ethic. They don't know how to be a good employee. They haven't had jobs and [learned to be] accountable."

Teens need jobs to learn the value of work, she says. They need mentors and feedback on performance.

"The vast majority [of teenagers and younger adults] don't wake up one day and understand what it is to be an employee, to learn to be counted on, to be accountable, to do well or not. ... The workers we're not hiring will come into the work force, whether you're hiring them at 16 or 30."

HR also can benefit from teen employment in several ways.

* Identify and keep the best. "I try to convince my clients to give a performance evaluation at the end, to show where [the teens] could develop, where they performed well. If they were good ... provide a financial incentive [next year], a premium," Mathews says.

* Adapt to the millennial mind. The millennials, born after 1977, are more interested in flexible hours and a work/life balance than salary and benefits, Grasz says.

To attract the best young workers, schedule around school hours and consider offering transportation, Mathews suggests. "The employer needs to get creative. It's not a never-ending supply, especially of good workers."

* Create summer internships. On a broad level, some cities such as Boston, run large programs that help businesses create paid summer internships.

On a smaller scale, Stamer says she personally hires a few students every summer in her law firm.

"I do it for two-fold reasons: If I do my job right, I get valuable service at less rate. These people are going on and build the world I live in. I'm building a safety net for services I need in the future."

June 26, 2008

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