New Perspective on Summer Jobs

My first real job was delivering The Detroit Free Press during my high school years.  I had a morning route that required that I get up at 5:00 am.  I never got an allowance.  I earned my own spending money.  I also put some money in a savings account and gave my tithe to the church.  In addition I always had summer jobs.  My first work experience was cutting lawns for people in the neighborhood.  As I recall, I usually made somewhere in the area of two dollars for each lawn I cut.  During college I worked summers for the gas company in Detroit.  My dad was an accountant for the company and they had a program for the children of employees.  I worked during the summer in order to save up money to pay for incidental expenses during the school year. 

I recently read an article that leads me to believe that summer jobs for high school and even college students, are becoming a thing of the past.  For Baby Boomers and Generation X, the summer job was a rite of passage. Today's teenagers have other priorities. During July of last year 43% of 16- to 19-year-olds were either working or looking for a job. That's 10 points lower than in July 2006. In 1988 and 1989, the July labor force participation rate for teenagers nearly hit 70 percent. 

According to Bloomberg Business, there are a variety of reasons today’s students are not working.  In some cases they're being crowded out of the workforce by older Americans, now working past 65 at the highest rates in more than 50 years. Immigrants are competing with teens for jobs; a 2012 study found that less educated immigrants affected employment for U.S. native-born teenagers far more than for native-born adults. In other cases, parents are encouraging their kids to volunteer and sign up for extracurricular activities instead of working.  The theory is it will impress college admission counselors. College-bound teens aren't looking for work because the money doesn't go as far as it used to.

There is another reason many high school and college students are not seeking jobs.  Many of them are seeking internships where the emphasis is on gaining experience and building a network.  Even if the position does not pay, they still see the experience as being valuable.  There also is the added incentive to want to perform well.  The hope always is that it will pay off in the future.  Perhaps today’s students are a step ahead of where I was.  I worked so I had spending money.  Many of them are working to build a future.