Another dismal summer to be a teen looking for a job.
I hate to read “those kids today” rants – this is more of a “those poor kids today” version of that.
I think having a job when one is young is important, really important. And I don’t mean having a fancy internship, I mean a job where you make money for college, or for whatever thing you think you HAVE to have that your parents are unwilling or unable to fund.
It’s important not only to earn your own scratch, but to be bored out of your mind, to have to contemplate “OMG is this ALL there is???” and to think “here are the 10,000 other things I’d rather put my super powers to use in favor of.” My summer job at the pool definitely inspired endless fantasies of what my grown-up life would be like. Being unstimulated by my surroundings and/or terrified of being stuck where I was at that point in time was a HUGE motivator to me.
It makes me sad to think that fewer kids get the chance to go through that intellectual exercise at a relatively lower risk point in their lives. I think it’s a crucial component of being able to say “you know what, I’d rather do XXX, maybe make less money but do things I believe are good, with people I want to work with” later in life.
Fewer than 30% of teens ages 16 to 19 are likely to find paying jobs this summer, down from 52% in 2000 and about the same as the summer 2010 rate of 29.6%, the lowest since the government began keeping records in the 1940s, says Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, Boston. Beyond general job-market weakness, tighter legal restrictions on youth labor and adult competition for jobs are crowding teens out.
With summer approaching, an increasing number of high-schoolers around the country are preparing to launch their own start-ups—and not just lemonade stands. With lawn-mowing businesses, hand-painting of tennis shoes or Bosnian-language computer repairs, teens are bucking long odds in the dismal job market and earning their own mall money or cash for college.
How many of kids with their own little businesses will be inspired to dream up bigger businesses?
About 3.7% of high-school seniors are interested in becoming business owners or entrepreneurs, based on a survey of 1.9 million students by the National Research Center for College & University Admissions, Lee’s Summit, Mo. Interest among younger high-school students is higher, at 4.1% to 4.4%.
Born Curious 
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