Jobs for only 25% of teens: study
BY FRANCINE KNOWLES Business Reporter fknowles@suntimes.com May 2, 2011 9:57AM
Teen summer employment rate
2000 - 45 percent
2010 - 25.6 percent
Source: Northeastern University Center for Labor Market Studies
Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM
As few as 25 percent of 16- to 19-year-olds are likely to be employed this summer, part of a decades-long trend of declines in teen summer employment, according to a report to be released today at the Chicago Urban League. By comparison, 45 percent of teens had summer employment in 2000, a study by Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies found.
The low employment rates will have negative repercussions on teens’ future employability, report co-author Andrew Sum warns. The report looked at teens ages 16 to 19.
“The less work you do when you’re a teenager, the less likely it is that you work [right] after you graduate, and you’re going to end up getting lower-wage, less employment when you’re in your early- to mid-20s,” he said.
The situation is “cutting off an avenue by which they would have gained access to experience and skill to help them” land future jobs, he said.
The teen summer employment level has declined for four straight years, hitting a record low of 25.6 percent last year, the report revealed. And while the nation’s overall employment grew by 866,000 between the first quarter of 2010 and 2011, the number of employed teens dropped by 131,000.
Eighteen-year-old Suleima Hamad is among teens in Chicago who wants to find work this summer. Hamad, who will graduate from Latino Youth High School this year, says it’s important for teens to have access to jobs.
“It gives you something to do,” she said. “It makes you feel like you have some responsibility as a teenager.”
Hamad also needs the income to help support her family, she says.
The absence of federal stimulus money this year means the City of Chicago will have 22 percent fewer jobs for young summer workers. There will be 14,000 teen summer jobs available this year, down from 18,000 offered by Mayor Daley last year.
Besides losing out on valuable work experience, the absence of summer jobs puts teens at risk for potential summer violence, said Chicago Urban League President and Chief Executive Officer Andrea Zopp.
The league is partnering with education representatives to present a youth hearing today on summer jobs and violence prevention strategies. Among those partners is the Alternative Schools Network, which commissioned the report.
“There’s a direct connection to idle teens and violence,” Zopp said.
The report showed that while employment rates have declined for every age group 54 and younger over the past decade, teens have fared the worst, and blacks and Hispanics have been hit the hardest. In 2009, 70 percent of teens ages 16 to 19 nationally were unemployed.
Among black teens, the rate was 79.4 percent, among Hispanics 73.5 percent and among whites 65.7 percent, Labor Department data show.
In the metropolitan Chicago area, 84 percent of teens ages 16 to 19 were unemployed that year, 72 percent of Hispanics and 64 percent of whites.
“It’s a crisis situation, and there needs to be some sort of funding for young people so they can have jobs,” said Jack Wuest, executive director of the Alternative Schools Network.
Sum recommends the creation of tax credits for employers who hire teens. He says that funding to help employers subsidize a portion of teen wages would also help address the problem.
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