Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/CSM Staff.
Jason Tackie’s summer job is at Parkway Community YMCA in Boston.
I was a day-camp counselor, my husband scooped ice cream back in the day and delivered newspapers, my sister checked out grocery-store items. Those were a few of the typical summer jobs people had.
Then came the years when it seemed like no one was taking those jobs anymore unless they were on a work-first-and-tour-America program from Eastern European or Turkish universities. US young people were taking internships at hedge funds and that sort of thing.
Now the Christian Science Monitor says summer jobs are back, at least according to a Northeastern University study of the Boston area.
Reporters Troy Aidan Sambajon and Oli Turner write, “Getting a summer job used to mean scooping ice cream at the mall or working the drive-thru at Burger King. Then came the Great Recession, followed by a rush for teens to spend their summers padding their college résumés with coding and language camps.
“That changed again when the world closed for COVID-19, and then reopened. Not all adults returned to their jobs. The virtual ones came and went. Enter the teenage worker. …
“The year before the pandemic, teens accounted for just over 2% of new hires, according to Gusto, a human resources and payroll company. In 2023, teens accounted for 20% of new hires. This summer, the share of teens working or looking for work hit a 14-year high – 38%, reversing a decades-long decline, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“ ‘Employers suddenly rediscovered teenagers as an important source of labor in the post-COVID economy, when adults realized they didn’t want to come back,’ says Alicia Sasser Modestino, associate professor at Northeastern University, who has been surveying Boston’s summer employment program for nearly a decade.
“The return of teens to lifeguard stations, grocery checkout lines, and summer camps has benefits beyond the paycheck, according to experts and the teens themselves. In addition to learning CPR or how to run a social media campaign, teens interviewed talk about learning financial literacy, planning for their future, and feeling part of a community.
“Consider Jayden Orr, 16, who just started in July at ABCD SummerWorks in Boston. …
“ ‘The main thing that’s on my mind lately is my family,’ says Jayden, ‘because I got to help my family out. That’s how the family’s gonna eat.’
“Zariyah Witherspoon, 17, also helps out her family, giving her mother $100 from her paychecks, the bulk of which she’s saving for college. …
“Zariyah talks about growing up at the South Street Youth Center and finding her passion in the center’s boiler-room-turned-recording studio. As a 10-year-old, she helped replace the youth center’s floors and paint the walls a cheerful blue. She says the program and the mentorship she has received from her manager have helped her focus on her future. …
” ‘Nearly 70% of the young people in the summer jobs program are using some of their earnings to pay some kind of household bill. They’re helping pay rent, groceries, or utilities,’ [Modestino] says. ‘They’re paying for their own cellphone or their own clothes now.’
“Allison Vernerey has been handling hundreds of applications a day. As executive director of the city’s Office of Youth Employment and Opportunity, she has also been meeting with families to place their youths in the right job.
“The pandemic was especially tough for teens, says Ms. Vernerey. ‘I speak to a lot of the parents. … There’s really this eagerness to in some way catch up and make sure that the youth are set up for success in the future.’ …
“The benefits of a summer job can shape teens’ academic and social success in both the short and long term, according to a 10-year study conducted by Northeastern University on Boston’s teen summer employment programs.
” ‘In the short term, young people increase their aspirations to go to college, have higher GPAs, and less absenteeism in school,’ says Dr. Modestino. …
“In the long term, the social-emotional skills developed on the job also reduce anxiety and conflict by training youths to deal with stressful situations. ‘We found that those soft skills – like managing emotions, resolving conflicts with a peer, and asking adults for help – those things are highly correlated with a reduction in criminal justice involvement. Young people in the program are 35% less likely to be involved in a violent crime and 29% less likely to be involved in a property crime,’ says Dr. Modestino. …
“ ‘What I see is that more kids are getting jobs because parents aren’t always going to be able to buy the stuff they want, so teens want to be more independent,’ says Jason Tackie. …
“Jason started working after his first year of high school to buy new shoes and basketball equipment. He didn’t expect to be learning new skills, gaining new mentors, or frankly, learning to have fun while working. He says having a job has improved his time management in school, too. Jason wants to study nursing at a four-year college, something he said he has only realized recently. …
“ ‘There’s a lot of stuff that I learned on the job that I didn’t know that I was going to learn,’ he adds. ‘I feel like it motivates me every day to come here and make sure everyone’s having a good time. It’s helped me grow up a lot.’ ”
More at the Monitor, here. No paywall.
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