In recession, teens compete with adults for menial jobs
Your teen may have the perfect excuse to laze around on the couch after school: the bad economy. The teenage unemployment rate, now 21.6 percent, is the highest in 17 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s up 5.5 percent from this time last year. The rate for black teens is a whopping 38 percent. To put those numbers in perspective, the overall unemployment rate is 8.1 percent.
Why is teen employment hit so hard by the contracting economy? In part, it’s because teens are now competing with desperate adults for entry-level and menial positions, according to the Associated Press.
“My friends are getting let go left and right, and they can’t find a new job,” Evan Latty, a senior at Noblesville High School in Indianapolis who recently landed a job at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery as a host and server told the news service. Latty put in applications at 10 companies and got only one interview.
Retail, a sector that’s traditional very popular with teen workers, has lost tens of thousands of jobs in the recession. Restaurants, another common gig for the high-school set, are also suffering as consumers cut back.
Photo by Daquella Manera