Youth jobs

Local employers should support and train the next generation.

Summer jobs were once a rite of passage, a way of figuring out what you did or didn’t want to do with your life. But in 2014 only about a third of young people could find a summer job, according to Chronicle business columnist Chris Tomlinson.

For many Texas youth who live in economically disadvantaged households, the barriers to finding a summer job, especially a meaningful one, are formidable. Their families may lack a tradition of higher education or professional employment. Students may not know how to put together a résumé, how to locate internships or how to apply.

Mayor Sylvester Turner and the Greater Houston Partnership have created a program that seeks to remedy this situation. The Hire Houston Youth Program encourages employers to post internship opportunities and trains students on the application process.

While accepting applications from all youth, the program focuses on students in some of the most disadvantaged parts of the city. To buttress interns’ future employment success, the mayor and the partnership have recruited 40 community groups to train the new employees on how they should conduct themselves in a professional work environment before they start work in jobs many have never heard of.

The program aims to place around 5,000 interns this summer — five times more than it did last year. But the business and philanthropic communities should go even higher and adopt the goal that every young Houstonian who wants a job this summer and is willing to work hard should have that chance.

Summer jobs foster a sense of responsibility while allowing students to earn much-needed income and to help families struggling to get by. They give children of poverty hope, but also a life goal.

A robust youth jobs program broadens the horizons of the participants and meets workforce needs, as well. “If we fundamentally believe that the people of this region are our most important asset, then we should spend the time to make sure they are developed effectively,” Peter Beard, the partnership’s senior vice president of workforce development, told Tomlinson.

Private individuals can help with this effort, too. For a $2,500 taxdeductible donation, Hire Houston Youth will place a young person in a paid internship with a nonprofit organization that needs the extra hands.

The alternative is bleak. People who fail to find work early in their lives run a risk of being unemployed and underemployed into early adulthood and beyond, according to researchers. That’s needless lost potential.

Let’s don’t let Houston’s youth languish during summer’s dog days. Put them to work.