The Dismal State of the Nation’s Teen Summer Job Market, 2008-2012, and the Employment Outlook...

The Center for Labor Market Studies evaluated the job market for teens in the years of 2008-2012 based on gender, race-ethnic, and family income background of the teens to determine who was more likely to be employed. The report also estimated the volume of lost summer teen employment opportunities in 2012 and then predicted the outlook for summer 2013. (Abstractor: Website Staff)

Full publication title: The Dismal State of the Nation’s Teen Summer Job Market, 2008-2012, and the Employment Outlook for the Summer of 2013

• “In 2011 and 2012, only 26 percent of the nation’s teens held any type of paid job, the lowest annual average employment rate in the history of our country in the post-World War II era” (p.1). • “Low income youth were the least likely to work. [In 2012], only 1 out of every 5 teens (21%) from a low income family (under $20,000 in pre-tax annual money income) had a job” (p.3). • When analyzing the data based on race-ethnic status, lower-income Black and Hispanic youth were the least likely to work. In 2012, “only 16 percent of Black low-income youth and 22 percent of Hispanic youth with a family income of less than $40,000 held a job” (p.4). • “If 51.7% of these teens had been able to obtain a job [in 2012], there would have been 8.777 million employed teens during an average month in the summer of that year. Compared to the actual average employment level in the summer of 2012 of only 5,179,900, this is a difference of nearly 3.6 million more employed teens, or a relative difference of 70%” (p.7). • “Closing a teen employment gap of this magnitude would take a large scale job creation effort involving teen job creation by the federal and state governments and a concerted effort by the private sector with possible wage subsidies or tax credits from Washington” (p.8). (Abstractor: Author)

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2013
• Author(s): Sum, Andrew; Khatiwada, Ishwar; McHugh, Walter; Palma, Sheila
• Organizational Author(s): Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University
• Funding Source: Funding source not identified
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Wesley Peterson
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies