Hard-to-reach careers
Nationally, the average employment rate for people ages 16 to 19 was about 32 percent last summer, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s down from 42 percent in 2005, from 53 percent in 1995 and from 58 percent in 1978, when the share of teens who held a summer job peaked, according to the agency.
One reason for the decline is that jobs once taken by teenagers — ice cream shops, fast food, entry-level retail positions — are filled by adults who need the hours to make ends meet.
“The problem is not a lack of desire by young people to have jobs in the summer; the problem is a lack of jobs,” said Thomas Showalter, director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Youth Employment Coalition.
Since the Great Recession, local governments have grappled with ways to bring young people job opportunities outside of school. And employers, even as the economy improves, remain vexed over how to tap into a workforce that remains too discouraged to put in resumes.
Among adults, labor force participation has fallen to about 63 percent, the lowest level since 1978. At the same time, national unemployment — those who are looking for work but can’t find it — sits near historic lows at 4.3 percent.
With a shared interest, cities and employers have dug deep to expand youth employment programs.
Hard-to-reach workers
Learn & Earn is still young. This is Partner4Work’s third summer administering the program, after several years of the city and county governments overseeing a patchwork of community groups that did the work largely on their own.
To reach students, the agency works through Pittsburgh Public Schools and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Managing the program means processing applications and working with more than two dozen community groups to determine job placements, Ms. Saulle said. They start in June and work through July.
Partner4Work’s survey of last summer’s Learn & Earn program provides a picture of the average participant: The students came from a household size of about four people with a typical income of $15,530. More than four in five participants were black; 6 percent were white. About three in five said they are enrolled in food stamps.
A 2015 study from the Pew Research Center found that while summer jobs have fallen for all teenagers, they remain particularly out of reach for minorities. The summer employment rate for 16- to 19-year-old whites was 34 percent compared with 19 percent for blacks, 23 percent for Asians and 25 percent for Hispanics, the study reported.
While there’s little data on summer jobs for immigrants and refugees, cultural barriers keep them from the American workforce, said Sarah C. Welch, director of the Career Development Center of the Jewish Family & Children’s Services.
“They don’t know how to navigate the workforce,”