Teen Workers Find They’re in High Demand
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Here's your Money Briefing for Wednesday, May 11th. I'm Trinae Neri for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for J.R. Whalen. It's looking like this will be one of the best summer job markets in years, especially for young workers. Federal job figures show unemployment among 16- to 19-year-olds was just about 10 percent last month, near the lowest level in decades. And about a third of U.S. teens in that age group are working.
In a lot of those retail jobs, the hourly wage has ticked up considerably. since last year. And it's often still not enough to attract adult workers. And so teens are emerging as a force to take these jobs where conditions have improved quite a bit.
Coming up, our workforce reporter, Catherine Dill, will be here to talk about what the job market looks like for teen workers. And we'll hear from one business owner about working with a young staff. That's after the break.
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In the tight labor market, new workers are in high demand, and that's good news for teenagers who want a job. Teen unemployment is near its lowest level in decades, as businesses look to them to help fill a record number of open positions.
Why are teen unemployment rates near multi‑decade lows and what does that mean for summer jobs?
So what's the teen workforce look like? To find out, I'm joined now by WSJ workforce reporter Catherine Dill. Hi, Catherine. Thanks for being here.
My pleasure.
Katherine, I remember having a summer job working in fast food when I was about 15 or 16, and I learned a lot. Having a summer job is like a rite of passage into adulthood, right?
Yeah, absolutely. And it used to be decades ago, even more so. I mean, many people probably haven't actually had that experience. So this is sort of a return to adulthood. what the labor market looked like for teenagers, you know, in like the 1950s or 60s. Katherine, you've spoken to some young people about work. How are they feeling about it? You know, the young people I spoke with were generally very positive about work. You know, for several of them, They started working because things that they would normally have done during the summer were upended by COVID last year. And so work was a good way for them to fill their time, to earn extra money. And they described, you know, a pretty positive experience.
So what kinds of jobs are they interested in? We're seeing a lot of teens taking jobs that teens used to hold years ago in tourism, in food service, in restaurants, in hospitality. they're hourly, the wages are often a little bit lower. And in the wake of the financial crisis, many of those jobs were taken by adults. And in a lot of cases, adults held multiple of those types of jobs. And so for a variety of factors, including that one, teens have been sort of squeezed out of the labor market over the last several decades. And so, as we know, the adults who held those jobs, many of them left those industries behind, possibly for good. during the pandemic. And so teens have really emerged as a really crucial pipeline for those employers.
Katherine, we've been talking a lot on the show about the tight labor market and how workers really have a lot more leverage, asking for more flex time and higher wages.
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