Fewer teens in the workplace

When Libby Anderson was growing up in Omaha, if she wanted spending money she had to earn it.

Things are different today, said Anderson, who works in the human resources field in Florida.

“The kids don’t want to work that hard. Their lives are comfortable, and their parents are not forcing them,” said Anderson, who acknowledges facing some of the same challenges with her children.

Anderson is right. Fewer teens today have summer jobs than a generation or so ago, but the reasons go beyond generous parents or a struggling economy.

School starts sooner in the fall, leaving less time to work; sports programs are more time-consuming; unpaid internships and volunteer work are more popular; “enrichment” opportunities abound in areas such as foreign language and theater.

Such experiences can enhance teens’ knowledge in many ways but perhaps not in real-life lessons like showing up on time, working for eight hours and getting along with supervisors and coworkers. And how that lack of experience might affect their professional working lives is worrisome.

Anderson’s 16-year-old son works 10 hours a week between early June and mid-August clearing dining room tables at a retirement home. He’d like more hours, his mother said, but at least he has a job of some kind.

Anderson said she is forcing him to do more chores around the house.

“A 16-year-old boy with time on his hands is not a good thing,” she said.

Federal statistics indicate that one-third of teens ages 16 to 19 worked last summer, down from about half who held summer jobs in 2000.

Part of the decrease is due to two recessions in the past 10 years, with fewer job openings and older, more experienced workers forced to take lower-paying jobs once held by teens.

But in a May report titled “The early 2000s: a period of declining teen summer employment rates,” the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said the decline of teens in the workplace goes beyond the economy, naming some of the trends cited earlier. For decades, during good times and bad, teen employment hovered between 46.3 percent and 58.0 percent.

The downward trend started during the 1990-91 recession, and the rate of teen employment never bounced back. In 2003, the percentage of 16- to 19-year-olds working during the summer fell to 41.7 percent. By 2008 it was 37.4 percent, then 32.9 percent in 2009.

The decline occurred for both boys and girls and across major race and ethnicity groups.

Anderson said having fewer teens holding summer jobs hurts the nation’s work ethic.

“Here’s what I hear from my clients,” she said. “They (teens) are highly educated and not very bright. They don’t understand basic concepts to being employed, to be at work on time, to do grunt work just because it’s part of their job.”

Others who work with young people and with college graduates aren’t so sure.

Michele Spadt, Nebraska state council director for the Society of Human Resource Management, said accountability at home and in school might play more important roles than summer jobs.

Whether a person worked during the summer as a teenager doesn’t directly affect their initial performance in the workplace, she said.

Linda Kizzier, vice president of employment and training at Goodwill Industries in Omaha, said she hasn’t noticed differences in work ethic or other core-employment issues in the last few years among clients who didn’t have summer jobs.

Goodwill Industries specializes in job training and other services for people who face employment challenges.

Employers might encounter different workplace problems among young people, but their behavior is about the same, Kizzier said. For example, young people today need to learn that making or receiving personal calls on their cell phones isn’t acceptable, she said.

“It’s not OK to text, e-mail or talk on a phone. That’s not appropriate workplace behavior.”

Teens who don’t work during the summer still can learn workplace skills and habits by getting college internships.

Tim Jones, a vice president of human resources at ConAgra Foods, said that one internship was common for students in the past but that has grown to two or three by the time many students graduate from college.

The advantage of internships, both paid and unpaid, is that they are in a person’s chosen field, Jones said. “The ones we bring in are focused, they know what they want out of an internship. They do a great job.”

Contact the writer:

444-1117, joe.ruff@owh.com

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