Summer jobs for today’s youths not like they were in times past
WASHINGTON - It was at Oregon’s Timberline Lodge, later known as a setting in the horror movie “The Shining,” where Patrick Doyle earned his first real paycheck.
He was a busboy. The job didn’t pay much. But Doyle quickly learned lessons that served him for years as he rose to become the CEO of Domino’s, the pizza delivery giant:
Show up on time, dress properly, treat customers well. “I grew up a lot that summer,” he says. As summer 2017 begins, America’s teenagers are far less likely to be acquiring the kinds of experiences Doyle found so useful. Once a teenage rite of passage, the summer job is vanishing.
Instead of baling hay, scooping ice cream or stocking supermarket shelves in July and August, today’s teens are more likely to be enrolled in summer school, doing volunteer work to burnish their college credentials or just hanging out with friends.
For many, not working is a choice. For some others, it reflects a lack of opportunities where they live, often in lower-income urban areas: They sometimes find that older workers hold the low-skill jobs that once would have been available to them.
In July 1986, 57 percent of Americans ages 16 to 19 were employed. The proportion stayed over 50 percent until 2002 when it began dropping steadily. By last July, only 36 percent were working.
Economists and labor market observers worry that falling teen employment will deprive them of valuable work experience and of opportunities to encounter people of different ethnic, social and cultural backgrounds.
But the longer-term trend for teen employment is down and likely to stay that way for several reasons.
Teenagers and their parents are increasingly aware of the value of a college education. A result is that more kids are spending summers volunteering or studying, to prepare for college and compete for slots at competitive schools.
In July 1986, just 12 percent of Americans ages 16 to 19 were taking summer classes. Thirty years later, the share had risen to 42 percent.
“Parental emphasis on the rewards of education has contributed to the decline in teen labor force participation,” Teresa Morisi, a Labor Department economist, concluded in a February report on teen employment, which has been declining in the United States and other wealthy countries.
Nathan Miller, 19, of New Berlin, Wisconsin, didn’t work throughout high school, choosing instead to play baseball and spend time with his family. He’s forgoing summer employment again this year to play baseball and take a certified nursing assistant course at a high school.
Miller, who starts college in the fall, thinks the course may give him an edge in his quest to become a doctor.
“I’m going to try to get as much hours as I can as early as possible to get as much advantage as I can to get into a competitive med school,” he says. “It’s a competition out there.”
Teens who do want to work can find that older workers are standing in the way. The summer jobs teens used to take — flipping burgers, unpacking produce at the grocery store, cashiering at the mall — are increasingly filled by older, often foreign-born, workers. In 20002001, teens accounted for 12 percent of retail workers, researchers at Drexel University found. Fifteen years later, it was just 7 percent. Over the same period, the teenage share of restaurant and hotel jobs fell from 21 percent to 16 percent.
Americans increasingly keep working even as they near traditional retirement age — sometimes taking entry-level jobs to provide income as they transition to full-time retirement. Foreignborn workers have also increased their share of jobs in hotels and restaurants that require little education.
Many employers view older workers as more reliable — more likely to show up on time, or at all, and to better know how to handle customers, co-workers and suppliers.
Many school districts have lengthened their academic years to try to boost student achievement, in the process shrinking summer vacation and the chance for teens to find work even if they want to. School years now often don’t end well into June and resume before Labor Day.
“With a shorter summer off from school, students may be less inclined to get a summer job, and employers may be less inclined to hire them,” Morisi writes.
The picture varies, of course, across demographic and racial lines. In poor urban neighborhoods, teens who want work struggle to find it. The summer jobs they used to get — scarce in the best of times — now often go to adults.
In wealthier areas, teens are more likely to be attending summer school, doing volunteer work, traveling with their families or pursuing sports or other extracurriculars.
Paul Harrington, Neeta Fogg and Ishwar Khatiwada of Drexel’s Center for Labor Markets and Policy studied average teen employment rates from June through August. They found that the percentage of employed 16-to-19year-olds fell from 45 percent in 1986 to 30 percent last year. (Their numbers are lower than the July-only figures because teens are less likely to work in June and August.)
They forecast that teens’ June-August employment rate will reach 30.5 percent this year, surpassing 30 percent for the first time since the recession year of 2009 and evidence of an overall improved job market.
But it’s still a lot lower than it used to be. Drexel’s Harrington laments the decline of summer employment for teens. In addition to providing on-thejob experience, summer work has proved especially valuable for poor urban youths.
Harrington cites research showing that city teens who participate in summer jobs programs achieve higher school attendance and academic performance and are less likely to commit crimes.
The electric train serving Arizona’s only coal mine derailed June 15 about 24 miles south of Page, damaging the tracks and cutting off the fuel supply to the Navajo Generating Station.
Salt River Project, which operates the plant, has enough coal on site to keep the station running, plant manager Joe Frazier said Friday. He expects the track to be repaired by the first week of July.
The train was making the 78-mile journey north from the Kayenta Mine to the power plant outside Page when 18 carloads of coal as well as the engine with two operators aboard derailed, he said. No one was hurt. “We are taking some time to repair the rail that was damaged,” Frazier said, adding that the cause is under investigation. “We believe it to be a mechanical failure at this time.”
While the train has had some accidents since the power plant began operating in 1974, this is only the second derailment other than minor disengagements around the rail yard, Frazier said.
The engines remained upright after the accident, but some of the coal hoppers spilled, he said.
“Everything stayed on our right of way,” he said, referring to the fenced area that keeps the public, livestock and wildlife off the tracks and overhead catenary system that supplies the train’s electrical power.
Frazier did not have an estimate yet on the cost of the damage.
The damaged cars have been moved off the track, where they will remain until they are scrapped, he said.
All three generators at the power plant remain in operation, according to SRP. The train can make three trips a day between the mine and plant, carrying more than 80 cars of coal that stretch a mile behind the engine. Each car can carry 100 tons of coal.
Already, the damaged track area has been regraded and new ties have been laid, Frazier said. Workers took Friday off from the repairs.
“We have rules where you can only work so many days straight, then you have a day off,” he said. “They came in and said they were going to bump up against that number, and do you want us to work through it. I said absolutely not. Even if we have a train that is not running we are not going to risk safety.”
The power plant on Navajo land has faced a variety of challenges and now is threatened with closure this year if a new lease is not approved by the Navajo Nation Council.
The utilities in favor of shutting down the plant say they can get cheaper power from natural-gas sources.