Many teens have quit looking for summer work

Nationwide job figures show that summer employment for
teenagers is off to its best start in six years. But the
good news is tempered with the fact that a lot of teens
have quit trying for summer work.

May is considered the first month of the teen
summer hiring season. U.S. Labor Department statistics
show that 157,000 teenagers, ages 16-to-19 got hired in
May, double the number in May last year.

Despite the improvements, the outplacement firm
Challenger, Gray & Christmas, says a growing number of
teenagers are abandoning the summer job market.

Marlena Sessions, executive director of the Workforce
Development Council of King County said that’s one tragic
result of the recession.

“What we’re actually seeing is this great
recession has not been an equal opportunity recession when
it comes to 16 to 24 year olds,” Sessions said.

Although she doesn’t have specific numbers, she says
large numbers of teenagers have stopped trying to find
summer work.

“These are young people who, in many cases, they didn’t
work last summer, they didn’t work the summer before, and
some of them are waking up at age 20, never having had a
summer job,” she said.

Sessions said summer jobs help teenagers gain
valuable work experience. For many, that’s been lost,
despite the good early summer jobs numbers this year.

“While it’s great to see, in general, more jobs
out there, certainly in service industries, retail, food
service, things that we think are great summer jobs and
first jobs for young people it’s going to be difficult
even for a young person who’s a little more mature now to
compete if he or she has never worked before,” Sessions
explained.

Bank of America and Expeditors International are
among the companies supporting summer employment for youth
with grants for jobs and skill training.

Federal stimulus dollars for jobs creation from the
Recovery Act of 2009 are long gone and the King County
Workforce Council is urging other local companies to find
a way to hire a young person this summer, or at the very
least offer an internship or participate in a mentoring
program to help young workers build their resumes.