Mark down the teen summer job as a quaint tradition that is slowly disappearing.
That, at least, appears to be where things are headed, according to a new report revealing that the teen unemployment rate for those 16 to 19 years of age is hovering at the 15% mark, the highest it has been in decades.
That means less teens working this summer as lifeguards or mowing lawns and bussing tables.
According to the Wall Street Journal, one of the factors spiriting the decrease is a “70% decline in available roles in the entertainment and leisure sector,” generally regarded as the “first rung on the ladder for teens.”
But the site Marketplace reports that the change in the labor participation rate is additionally attributable to the fact that fewer teens are actually looking for work.
It would appear, asserts the Washington Times, that instead of working, many of today’s teens would rather have “their faces glued to their cellphones all day.”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has produced numbers showing that in the 1970s upwards of 60% of teens had some sort of summer job. As of this summer that figure has dropped to 35%.
Some reports have pointed to an increase in the minimum wage, which in California is now up to $20 an hour. That’s “a lot of money to pay a first-time employee who’s likely to leave in less than three months,” argues the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Whatever the cause, something is being lost in the decline of summer teen employment, says Fortune magazine, noting that teens are missing out on the experience of acquiring jobs skills and work experience.
A greater concern, according to a Gallup survey, is that the lack of teen work has led to a growing sense of general pessimism on the part of the youngest members of today’s workforce.
The U.S., says a Gallup narrative, currently has the “largest gap of any country in job market perceptions between younger and older adults with the former feeling much less positive.”
In fact, continues the narrative, the level of job market optimism among Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, has dropped by 27% in the last three years, “similar to the decline between 2007 and 2009 near the time of the global financial crisis.”
July 21, 2026
By Garry Boulard
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
