Summer Job Outlook Sunnier for Teens as U.S. Market Mends.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-18/summer-job-outlook-sunier-for-teens-as-u-s-market-mends.html

Dwane Holloman plans to dedicate his summer to an American rite of passage: a teen job. The 17-year-old will operate amusement park rides at Hersheypark in Pennsylvania, near his home.More of his peers could share his luck this year, as short-term job prospects improve alongside the broader labor market, which has added more than 200,000 jobs in each of the past four months.Sixteen-to 19-year-olds last month gained the most jobs for May since 2006, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data not adjusted for seasonal fluctuations. The group added 217,000 jobs, compared with 215,000 the prior year.

Cobb said he expects hiring this year to be in line with 2013 levels. Last year, teens gained about 1.36 million summer jobs, up from 960,000 in 2010, based on the analysis.

Healthier Market

Late spring job gains aren’t the only indication that the labor market for teens is healthier. The jobless rate for 16- to 19-year-olds dropped to 19.2 percent last month from 24.1 percent a year earlier on a seasonally adjusted basis.

Shut Out

Jasmine Waters knows what it’s like to be shut out of the labor market by a lack of teenage work experience. Waters, 22, has applied to about 40 jobs over the past five to six months with little luck, she said.

“I just babysat a lot,” said Waters, who lives in Arlington, Virginia. She was turned down for a bookstore job after the company decided to hire someone with an employment background, she said. Her lack of history “works against me.”

Not working as a teen can also hurt a young person’s career trajectory by allowing them fewer chances to find their niche, said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce in Washington. That’s particularly true for those who don’t go on to college.

“You neither get work experience nor formal learning that allows you to figure out: What kind of education and training do I want to do? What kind of job do I want to do?” he said. “If you don’t get many trials, you’re going to get a lot of error.”

The slowly improving job market could also help coax back into the labor pool young people who have despaired of finding work.

Missing Teens

Teen participation has been declining for decades as young people opt to take summer classes, volunteer or intern to prepare for college. The share of 16-to-19 year olds holding a job or looking for one was 33.8 percent this May, down from more than 50 percent in the 1980s and 1990s, though slightly improved after hitting an all-time low of 32.9 percent in February.

The weak job market exacerbated the decline, and participation has plummeted 6.8 points just since May 2007. As of May, 833,000 teens were missing from the job search because of weak prospects, estimates Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

“These are the ones who are out of the labor force because job opportunities are weak,” Shierholz said. “That suggests that when job opportunities strengthen, they will come back in.”

Many teens still aim to work during the summer because they need or want the income, said Nadia Conyers, who helps place teens into jobs as a youth employment specialist with Arlington County in northern Virginia.

Jalin Dunn from Arlington falls into that camp. He and his friends work for “spending money,” he said.