How the shortage of immigrant workers played into the hands of teenagers in the United States

Teenagers are finding jobs more easily — and earning higher wages — as companies race to hire as the economy reopens and face a shortage of immigrant workers. But this trend may also have a downside, writes The New York Times.

Photo: Shutterstock

Haley Bailey, 17, of Irvine, Pennsylvania, said she was excited to get a summer job at the Kennywood amusement park that paid $9 an hour. Then she heard that the park was raising wages to $13 an hour—and she was delighted.

Roller coaster operators and lemonade drinkers at Pittsburgh's summertime favorite Kennywood amusement park won't have to buy their own uniforms this year. Those with a high school diploma will also receive $13 in starting wages — up from $9 last year — and new hires will receive free season passes for themselves and their families.

Big wage and benefit increases for Kennywood's seasonal workforce, where nearly half of employees are under 18, echoes what's happening across the country as employers try to hire waiters, administrators, and other service workers to meet growing demand as they recover. economy.

For American teen job seekers, this could be the best summer in years.

As companies try to go from barely staffed to fully staffed overnight, teenagers seem to benefit more than other demographics. The share of young people aged 16 to 19 in work has not been this high since 2008, before the global financial crisis led to a sharp decline in employment. Roughly 256 teens in this age group gained jobs in April, the vast majority of newly hired people, a significant change from their dramatic job losses at the start of the pandemic.

This can have a downside - for example, it can distract from studying. And while employment itself can offer learning opportunities, the latest wave of hiring has been led by white teenagers, raising concerns that young people from minority groups could miss out on the hot summer job market.

For Hailey Bailey, summer work means making more money for the car she hopes to buy. A recent high school graduate runs a vintage roller coaster and places people in catamarans. She was happy to get a job even at $ 9 an hour. And I was happy to know that the park had raised the rate to $ 13 an hour.

It's not just Kennywood that pays well. According to economist Luke Purdue, small businesses have been raising the wages of teenagers in the service industry in recent months. Teens were hit at the start of the pandemic, but returned to their pre-coronavirus wage levels in March 2021 and spent the first half of May watching their wages exceed that level.

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For employers, adolescents can become an important new source of ready-made labor at a time when demand is recovering and vacancies remain unfilled. Health and childcare problems prevent some adult workers from returning to their duties quickly. Expanded unemployment insurance benefits can also give workers the financial support they need to get better opportunities. These problems are exacerbated by the fact that the United States issues far fewer immigration work visas during the pandemic, so workers from abroad, who are usually in agricultural and seasonal jobs, are absent from the labor market.

Adolescents find jobs faster than other age groups, and labor shortages are felt across the country.

With temperatures rising in Henderson, Kentucky, officials worried they wouldn't have enough lifeguards to reopen the only public pool for the summer. In mid-May, they had about six job applicants who received a starting salary of $ 8,50 an hour; the city needs at least eight lifeguards on duty a day to safely manage a full pool. On May 25, the City raised the starting wage to $ 10 an hour and lowered the minimum age for job seekers from 16 to 15. It looks like it worked: more teens applied, and the city began interviewing candidates for open positions.

Teenagers are earning more than just a paycheck as employers try to lure job seekers. Kennywood workers receive season tickets for themselves and three family members, a bonus of about $300. Applebee's offered a deal in which candidates who passed the interview received a voucher for a free snack. Restaurants and gas stations across the country are offering signing bonuses.

But benefits and better pay may not be for everyone. White teens largely lost their jobs at the onset of the pandemic, and they became the growth leaders in 2021, the black teens unemployment rate rose relatively little, and Hispanic teens actually lost their jobs. It is a long-standing inequality in which white adolescents work in much larger numbers, and this gap could widen if the current trajectory continues.

According to Alicia Sasser Modestino, an economist at Northeastern University who studies youth labor markets, limited access to transportation is one of the important factors behind teen employment problems. Some urban centers with public transportation have little foot traffic, which can disadvantage teens living in cities.

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A study by Modestino found that the long-term decline in adolescent activity is partly due to the transition to college preparation and internship, but many still need work for economic reasons. But the teens who are benefiting now cannot expect a favorable job market in the long run, said Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown University's Center for Education and Workforce.

“There may be a short-term positive effect as young people may move into many jobs where adults have left for whatever reason,” he said. “This will be temporary because we always take care of the adults first.”

Educators are voicing a different concern: numerous and thriving jobs for teenagers can be a distraction from school. When classroom resumed last August at Torrington High School, which serves 330 students in a small Wyoming town, Principal Chase Christensen found that about 10 of his older students had not returned. They took full-time jobs, including working night shifts in a nursing home and a gravel pit, and were reluctant to give up money. Five have since dropped out or never graduated from high school.

“They’re used to paying a full-time employee,” Christensen said. “They get jobs that high school students don’t usually get.”

If better job prospects in the near future surpass adolescents' plans for further education or training, that could also mean problems. Economic research has consistently shown that those who succeed in complementary training have better-paying careers.

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However, Modestino noted that most of the employees are now hired for summer jobs, which are less likely to interfere with their studies. And this may have its advantages. For people like Bailey, this means the ability to save money for training in the future. She would like to go to community college for an engineering degree.

“I’ve always been interested in robots and love programming and coding,” she said, explaining that learning how roller coasters work fits her academic interests.

Sheila Bentley, 18, who recently won a membership to Kennywood, said her salary would allow her to decorate her dorm room at Slippery Rock University. This year she is entering the second year.

“I want to save for school and other expenses,” she said. “And there’s plenty to do this summer.”

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