This chart blows my mind. How can 91% of all 16 to 19 year olds in the country not be working this summer? If the economy is in its sixth year of recovery and the unemployment rate is really 5.3%, why is the percentage of teenagers working at an all-time low? I was 16 in 1979. I worked every year from the time I was 16. My oldest son worked at a golf course at 16. My middle son started working at Dunkin Donuts at 16 until leaving for college last week and working as an RA. My youngest son just turned 16 and immediately got a waiter job at a local retirement home.
I see help wanted signs at fast food joints, restaurants and retail stores in malls. If a teenager wants a job they can get a job.
So why aren’t teenagers working? Are they lazy? Are their parents too easy on them? WTF is wrong with this country?
“WTF is wrong with this country?”
Here are a few:
Fiat money at the end of its life.
Onerous job killing government regulations.
Ridiculous minimum wage laws.
Illegal immigrants cutting grass and doing other low paying jobs.
Stucky masturbating.
Parenting. Mommie & daddie pay for everything.
We made our kids cook dinner, clean and do their own laundry. Most nitwits go to college and can’t do laundry!! Let alone cook a meal.
We made both our kids work and help pay for college. Poor boy….. Has to work out all summer for football AND make at least 6k to pay towards what the school doesn’t pick up. Which is actually quite a lot.
Here’s a thought: maybe the teens are applying for the jobs, but getting passed over in favor of Obamacare victims who can’t work more than 29 hours, people too broke to retire, etc.
taxSlave
The reason I masturbate is because of the first four items on your list. So, don’t blame me. Oh, and porn.
Maybe their working in the underground economy. That’s what I’d do if I in their shoes.
Smart Phones, which are lazy AND stupid. PS3, Xbox. Tablets.
I saw a chart that the older a person up to about 65, the more likely to be hired and working. Employers prefer the older workers. .
Best pre-16 part time job was working the little league ball games. $5 for umping the plate, $3 for umping the bases, or a $1 for keeping the box scores. Late 1960’s..working 4 games a day…only fear was the parental group. Mowed lawns for $2, hand trim for another buck. Always worked the neighborhood after a big snow.
Never had a time whereas I could not find/invent something
Nothing a good hard economic crash wont cure………hunger is a powerful motivator.
“Son get your ass out there and shovel some shit for a few hours to buy us a loaf of bread.”
Yes and yes to laziness and hands-off (also lazy) parenting, but that ain’t all.
Today’s teens were raised by public skools, TV and video games. Their attention span is that of a gnat, and they expect instant gratification for the tiniest accomplishment.
A whole shitload of our boys were raised (i.e.; coddled) by their mommies and don’t even seem to understand that they should clean up after themselves.
Also, it seems that anything that looks like a chair embodies a tractor beam that their asses are unable to resist.
On the flip side, the opportunities they find are dismal at best- but this also speaks to an absolute dearth of real world skills. So the issue is more complex than it appears from the surface. In short, a very large percentage of our youth are unemployable. That’s probably the most likely cause of the ubiquitous “help wanted” signs.
What I learned as a kid
“Off your ass
And on your feet
Outta the shade
And into the heat
You gotta work
If you want to eat.”
There are 16-19 year olds that want to work ??????????
I’ve tried employing a few of them, want a check, yes, want to work, no.
Acetinker nailed it. My ladyfriend’s nephew is 27 and works part time making pizza’s. Of course he lives at home. His parents paid his way through auto and diesel mechanic school, but when he got a job at a local dealership he quit after a few months. He said he wasn’t paid enough and his boss was “mean”.
Like most heavy pot-smoking guys under 30 that I’ve known, he is lazy and hasn’t the slightest concern for the future. His mommy spoils him and his dad concentrates on sports and his stamp collection.
In response to the comment by Bea Lever….You are thinking that a good, hard jolt with straighten these kids out. I used to think that as well. But lately I believe that they will simply perish in hard times. If they can’t handle the ‘problems’ of life in this soft society, then they will die like flies when things get sporty.
Just thinking about my youth. I picked strawberries and pole beans at the age of about 12. I was picked up at 5 AM by the farm driving a decrepit old school bus. They were nice to us kids, ignored our berry fights and even hosted a bbq at the end of the season. As a teen I worked in canneries and painted schools for the local district. I never had a summer without a job. Clearly boomers are responsible for the evils that beset this country.
If you ran a fast food restaurant, who would you rather hire – an American high school kid who has school until 3:15 and can’t start working until 4:15, who can only work about 15 hours a week (not past 11 pm) and can has to fit his work around his sports schedule or … a 35 year old Mexican with fake papers who can work 40 hours, show up whenever you tell him to and needs the job to feed his family? Fast food workers are about 80% Latino and most of those are probably illegal. It’s surprising any American kids can get a job. Oh sure, the entrepreneurial ones can create their own job, but that’s no more than 10% of them.
Neither side wants each other. The employer would rather hire a 40 year old with three kids and a rent payment — they are going to show up, are going to put up with mild exploitation, lousy co-workers, etc. In short, they are desperate enough to work.
The teenagers don’t want a job as it cuts into their smartphone time. They don’t want a job without prestige because a photo of them in their burger king hat might wind up on social media. They listen to their clueless guidance counselors telling them that college will enable them to live on easy street. Furthermore, who needs money when you can watch superhero sequels on Netflix all day?
Your all right. So where does this all lead?
Baby boomers leaving the work force and those entering it have less than a high school or even grade school education. What decent lower middle class jobs there were/are are moved overseas and the college grades we have today whether industrious or not have little to choose from. If they can find a job it’s in service not manufacturing or anywhere remotely associated with the production of hard goods, only the maniulatinof someone elses, adding no real value.
Meanwhile our politicians and media distract the public with the war on terror, the war on women, the war on LGBT’s, the war on illegals, the war on blacks, the war on Christians, the war on the battle flag, the war on the GOP, the war on…..you name it. And now to be white is shameful. One transvestite’s plight is more news worthy the milllon dead by our hand and millions more made homeless? WTF??
Divide and conquer…….
Use the same tactic on them…..Divide and conquer one asshole politician at a time……they’ll get the message. Or am I dreaming? Of course we can always just keep talking about it……..
My cousins 22 year old daughter is always bitching that all she does is work so she can afford her car, gas and insurance, so she can go to work.
Well, sort of. I chalk it up to parents (in her case raised by a single uber liberal mother and grandma) who never taught (because they don’t have a fucking clue) how to live on a simple budget.
Today’s kids (18-30 year olds) don’t mind paying for what they want; iPhone with data plan, internet, cable tv with 350 channels, eating out every day, nice car, new clothes, every new iGadget, FitBit, etc etc etc.
What they don’t want to pay for is the student debt they signed for, credit cards they signed up for, gas for the car, insurance, rent, utilities.
It comes down to needs and wants.
They demand a “living wage” so they can pay for the things they need to survive because 99% of their income is spent on wants. They have a impossible time dealing with working a low skilled job (because they pissed away their education) for a low pay and all they can do is scream this is not fair.
So they refuse to work $7.00 per hour minimum wage jobs and grow up to be 30 year olds with zero real world job experience and a drain on producers.
Partly because mommy and daddy pay for everything but also they dont have goals to dave for or achieve, they are floating thru life.
I also blame the war on cars (that eric peters talks about) at least for the males.
My first job was a paperboy at 11, then a youth soccer referree, did landscaping and eventually a lifeguard and asst park director.
Almost allthose jobs were for cars, modifications, insurance, maintenance, etc. Cars are too fucking regulated and expensive these days, the freedom they symbolized to many is fleeting. They have tracking devices and are filled with dash claymores (airbags) that might kill you. They are less fun and more expensive, kids cant fix or mod them with basic tools anymore.
Most HS kids arent going to save for college or a house so what other big ticket item is there to represent an overarching goal? Maybe musical instruments…?
That leaves almost nothing, theyll keep buying smart phones and crappy video games.
Plus the push to pay people “living wages” for teenager jobs keeps them out of the market.
My first job was working in a textile mill at age 16 .Got out of school and headed straight to work.Had to pay for my muscle cars .Then at age 18 I got my first so called real job.These young people are in for some big disappointments in life..They expect to much to soon and this economy will not deliver the prosperity it once did.
Chronic masturbating is a problem not only for lazy young people but for a 60 year old man on this site .(want mention any names but you all know the one)
Work participaton will increase when we air condition the outdoors beacuse kids today lack sweat glands. All the summer jobs I had as a kid was outdoors, bailing hay, detasseling corn, pouring concrete.
After starting to work at age 13 delivering papers, cutting lawns, shoveling snow, waxing boats and helping install seawalls in Lake Michigan to protect rich folks homes from tumbling in my first real job was working in a bank vault, I was a “runner” for Hackley Union National Bank and Trust Company in the 70’s. I had a million dollars in my vault more than once, awesome to look upon as were the hot little tellers back in the day.
The pay was $1.90 per hour back then, after I was fired I tried waiting tables, that lasted about six months before I was fired, so I washed dish’s for .90c an hour, got fired.
I wasn’t cut out for higher education so I quit the local community college after the first half semester.
I made far more money working for myself so in my next job as a union worker at $3.75 an hour in the trades I started a side business with my wife and worked our fingers to the bone, at that time I had three employees working for me just doing side jobs, all cash, the good ol days.
Ten years later I started my own non union company in 1987. Union scale was $8.75 an hour so I paid my guys $7.75 an hour but they didn’t have to pay union dues or a BA assessment. Unions were on the way out in West Michigan and our union was a fucking joke anyway.
I guess most of us old farts came from an era that if you didn’t like your lot in life you changed your lot in life by changing jobs, working multiple jobs, learning new skills or education.
Bitching didn’t get you anywhere except laughed at, not paying your bills resulted in eviction. Today it seems bitching is the cool thing to do, and working two jobs, learning new skills, changing your life is scorned.
Unemployment only covers those people actively seeking work. If you are inactive, you don’t count as unemployed but simply fall off the chart.
Since some young people are pursuing higher education (more so than before), they can’t be unemployed and also going to school.
Another factor is the relationship between unemployment benefits and unemployed as a status. A lot of young workers do not get unemployment benefits, for various reasons, and therefore don’t count as part of the unemployed.
A better measure would be the number of positions unfilled at any given time that are usually filled by young people, but this would be difficult to track. Some business owners would take it as an affront to their privacy that they need to disclose information about their staffing needs. They need to be left alone to hire undocumented immigrants and such.
Started cutting grass for a buck fifty at age 12, got a summer job as deck hand on shrimper at age 14 for 10 bucks a day…whoohoo. Man, I was rolling in bucks, and was able to help Mom and Dad with my brothers and sisters school clothes that year. Christmas break me and my buddy worked at the rail yards unloading box cars for a buck an hour and in the summer at the shipyards for $2.75 an hour, and lots of overtime. My generation, at least most of them, could always find something, not always fun, but always rewarding in life lessons. BTW, I am one of those baby boomers many are always bitching and complaining about. I’ve earned my R&R…so fuck off and blow me.
Zygon
The chart doesn’t show unemployment. It shows % of teens in the summer workforce. You don’t go to school in the summer. The chart is comparable over decades.
Unemployment is not a factor in this chart.
Administrator: I never read the chart as showing the rate of unemployment, however:
There is a decreasing number of employed teens(as the chart shows), therefore there is an increasing number of unemployed teens.
My answers as to what explains this are as valid as any other answers that I’ve read from the thread.