Young people looking for summer jobs this year are set to face some of the worst labor market conditions in a while. There's a lot of stickiness in the labor market, so during a downturn firms don't necessarily cut back as much as they would if real life were a frictionless plane (instead, you just like nominal wages stay flat as real wages decline). But many slightly unorthodox corners of the labor market -- the summer jobs segment among them -- don't have these kind of features and it's easy enough to just avoid hiring as many part time temporary workers as you did the year before.
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Summer Jobs
25 May 2008 02:01 pm
Comments (25)
Most people who get summer jobs do so because they need the money. IF you can afford to intern for free, then your mommy and daddy probably already pay all your bills for you and it's really hard to shed any tears over it.
Some people do this so they can pay for college, though, and those people don't have rich mommies and daddies to do everything for them.
Funny,
I just spent a week down on the coast in NCarolina and a lot of the "help" was caribbean, latino and east european. I still see tons of Irish kids on the coast of NJersey and LongIsland in the summer waiting tables. Last Christmas I was in Florida and the place was about 95% staffed by Jamacians.
I guess the issue is it is harder to get $1,000 a week law interships and cool jobs in design and on Wall Street. When I was younger (say 30 years back) the opportunity to work construction, wait tables, etc. was something middle-class white kids jumped at. Now they turn up their noses at WORK and whine about gas prices for their SUVs. You know I am not exaggerating
Funny,
I just spent a week down on the coast in NCarolina and a lot of the "help" was caribbean, latino and east european. I still see tons of Irish kids on the coast of NJersey and LongIsland in the summer waiting tables. Last Christmas I was in Florida and the place was about 95% staffed by Jamacians.
I guess the issue is it is harder to get $1,000 a week law interships and cool jobs in design and on Wall Street. When I was younger (say 30 years back) the opportunity to work construction, wait tables, etc. was something middle-class white kids jumped at. Now they turn up their noses at WORK and whine about gas prices for their SUVs. You know I am not exaggerating
Soulite,
Agreed, parents supporting their teen-aged sons and daughters is a truly galling expression of class privilege. Sickening, really.
just came across this quote from my daily ny times email:
"Kids from higher income households just aren’t going into the labor market. They’re looking for things to put on résumés, and working at Dairy Queen or Wal-Mart just isn’t going to help you get into Wake Forest or Stanford. And they just don’t need the cash."
MARK ZANDI, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, on the decline in teenage employment.
Jozef
1) The article Matt linked to did NOT say kids were sitting on their asses and not applying to jobs.
It SAID the Fucking JOBS are NOT there. That companies are not hiring. That it's the worst summer job market in decades.
Surprising, given this Bush Economic Boom we're enjoying.
And what jobs there are being sucked up by illegal immigrants --as your post suggested.
2) Old cocksuckers like you are happy to draft those kids and send their asses off to protect your sorry ass. But you don't think they deserve anything from this country -- and this country's plutocrats -- in return.
3) You'd get your just deserts if one of those kids hits you on the head and steals your wallet. I , for one, would be cheering the little fucker on.
Asshole.
When colleges award financial aid, they make parents and students fill out a US Government form called the FAFSA. The US Government then checks the IRS tax returns,etc to verify the information and gives the colleges the families
EFC --Expected Family Contribution.
That EFC ASSUMES as a GIVEN that the Kid will be earning around $3000 from a summer job. After taxes. So a lot of kids are going to be really hurting if they DON'T find work this summer.
You'll notice that Bush and the Fed didn't make those rich investment bankers on Wall Street fill out any financial aid forms when they handed them that $200 BILLION bailout a few months ago.
No need to mess with the paperwork. Just open up the back door to the US Treasury and bring out the forklifts.
Not noticed by Matt: the rise in the minimum wage impact. Is it huge? No, but - at the margin - it makes a difference in the decision to hire or not hire. It's one of those unintended consequences - the raise helps those who already have a minimum wage job, but tends to make it harder for those with the fewest skills to find one in the first place.
As a business owner the thing killing me the most right now is the dramatic increase in expenses.
On the labor front I have the best pool of applicants I've ever had, but I do feel some loyalty to my existing employees (although sometimes upgrading seems tempting). Hence I don't fire or lay people off, but I have cut hours and haven't given raises. This is just to keep the businesses treading water. My employees in turn keep letting me know how exploited they feel. Frankly I'd be better off if a couple of them quit.
However, I cannot give my employees raises because even raising my prices (which drives down the number of customers) won't offset the increase in my rent, utilities, and supply costs. One of my locations is in an area where there is no public transportation, and I've had to curtail hours because I can't get anyone to drive there. Heck I don't even drive as often to visit the stores because gas is too expensive. One store,which is 12 miles from my house is accessible by bicycle (which I have used frequently to go there), unfortunately the other is 25 miles away and on the other side of two mountain ranges. It just takes too long to get there by bike.
Usually in the summer I like to hire one or two high school students, more to give them some work experience and help them out than from any benefit I get (so far they've overwhelmingly been horrid employees).
This is the reality of being in a small business in tough times. There are days when I don't even know whether I'll make it through this economy without losing everything. I'm luckier than most because I am still far downside up with my house, have no debt, am a lawyer and have a real estate license. I can also fix computers and set up networks. Given this set of skills I can usually find ways to make money or augment my income. I'm feeling lately though like I'm carrying a dozen employees on my back and I don't know how far I can carry them.
Co-operative education thrives in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Here's Wikipedia's entry on UWaterloo (whose Chancellor is the cofounder of RIM - the BlackBerry people):
'The University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada has the largest co-operative education program in the World, with more than 11,000 students enrolled in co-op programs and more than 3,000 active co-op employers. Waterloo's renowned engineering program is one of the few co-op only engineering programs in Canada. Waterloo's 5-year co-op program includes 24 months of work experience, the longest undergraduate co-op experience in Canada and most likely in the world.'
Wilfred Laurier University, also in Waterloo, specializes in placing business students with various employers over the duration of their 5 year undergrad program. They get paid good money with companies (both locally and internationally) like RIM, Microsoft, Google, HP, Bell etc.
This seems to be a very effective model, though I'm not familiar with what happens to students who aren't in business or engineering programs at these schools. Does anyone know?
The NYT quoted someone but failed to mention the studies he's done indicating why teens can't find jobs. Oh well, at least MattY can feel all good about himself.
Re Jozef's comment " When I was younger (say 30 years back) the opportunity to work construction, wait tables, etc. was something middle-class white kids jumped at. Now they turn up their noses at WORK and whine about gas prices for their SUVs "
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1) How many jobs does Jozef there is in the CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY --given that we have a year's supply of houses sitting on a dead market in some places. HELLO?? Anyone home in that head?
2) I was out at Lowes a little while ago and spot- checked the job postings on their bulletin to see how many jobs our lazy kids are ignoring--given Jozef's earlier comments.
Answer? NONE. Empty clipboard.
3) Waiters in Restaurants? The first place consumers cut when times get tough is eating out. Restaurants are having trouble meeting their regular payroll --much less adding new people. Same goes for many retail outlets.
See
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/business/27spend.html?_r=1&ex=1366948800&en=c1b8f0ce832fe6bb&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin
If you are willing to volunteer or can intern, they will be more favorable to you.
During my college years, I would have leapt at a chance to do an upaid internship, but it would have prevented me from earning enough to contribute to my tuition bills. Many of my classmates who pursued these opportunities also had parents who paid the full cost of a private school tuition.
This is also a problem in Democratic politics, as only the wealthy are able to pursue unpaid DC internships. I read once that the Republicans have been providing some housing and maybe living expenses for a few dozen interns per summer.
Ha! This is old news for me. Portland, OR has had one of the worst unemployment levels for years, exacerbated by the fact it has one of the worst UNDER employment records as well. Do you think a coffee shop or restaurant is going to hire a high school student for 3 months when they can get a college grad full time? A person with a master's degree? My friend's father has a wood working business, and needed to hire a janitor. Most of their applicants were Reed College grads. Powell's holiday cashier hiring rate is less than 1% (much harder than getting into grad or law school), and even a minimum wage retail job with no benefits attracts 20-30 applicants.
I was unemployed throughout high school summers and my first years in college, and it wasn't through lack of trying. All the food industry jobs I found required at least 3 years of experience. Only Starbucks was willing to train, but they wouldn't hire an untrained person just for summer, etc. I couldn't even get a job as a maid, because I didn't have a car (I offered to take the bus to my clients houses, but they turned me down). I managed to put together some paid internships, paid courtesy of the federal government work study program, which pays a (below local minimum wage) salary over the summer to students who qualify for work study during the year, so they can "give back to their disadvantaged community." The next year I managed to get some no child left behind money and work as a reading tutor. Looked good on the resume, sure, but was a result of not being considered qualified enough to wait tables, sell nail polish, etc.
Re: Do you think a coffee shop or restaurant is going to hire a high school student for 3 months when they can get a college grad full time? A person with a master's degree?
Why in the world would a coffee shop want someone with a master's degree? That shouts "Over-qualified" at high decibels. If I were an employee in that sort of business I certainly would not want people who might resent their jobs and would dump me overboard with no notice as soon as a "real" job opened up for them.
I usually don't argue with the insane as "Don Williams" so obviously is, but the Jamaican, Irish and other young people I was referring to that work at resorts from Florida to Maine every season are LEGAL immigrants who are invited here to do jobs that lazy fat asssed american kids will no longer do
there are plenty of jobs in construction, and at restaurants. Many of them are being done by illegals right now.
And does this insane man really think there is no paperwork when a bank borrows (yes, borrows!) from the Federal Reserve. And those banks pledge good collateral. I hear ignoramuses always say, "I wish I could borrow from the Fed" - do you have AAA bonds to pledge and are you a Bank?
What a pathetic state we are in and surely not because of Bush
I usually don't argue with the insane as "Don Williams" so obviously is, but the Jamaican, Irish and other young people I was referring to that work at resorts from Florida to Maine every season are LEGAL immigrants who are invited here to do jobs that lazy fat asssed american kids will no longer do
there are plenty of jobs in construction, and at restaurants. Many of them are being done by illegals right now.
And does this insane man really think there is no paperwork when a bank borrows (yes, borrows!) from the Federal Reserve. And those banks pledge good collateral. I hear ignoramuses always say, "I wish I could borrow from the Fed" - do you have AAA bonds to pledge and are you a Bank?
What a pathetic state we are in and surely not because of Bush
Re: there are plenty of jobs in construction, and at restaurants. Many of them are being done by illegals right now.
Contrsuction has been laying off people due to the housing bust-- this is even causing a small flow of illegal aliens back to Mexico. Resturants are also struggling since eating out has been one of the first things cut from budgets due to high gas prices. Perhaps in very touristy areas this is not so notiecable. Also, I'm not sure where these hordes of foreign waiters are. Except at ethnic resturants all my servers have been Americans (or at least spoke perfect American-accented English).
Re Jozef's comment "And does this insane man really think there is no paperwork when a bank borrows (yes, borrows!) from the Federal Reserve. And those banks pledge good collateral."
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ha ha ha ha ha. You're a funny man, Jozef.
Their collateral is shit. Else they would have been able to sell it on the market and not need a bailout.
AAA bonds? Everyone knows that part of the current crisis is that a significant fraction of AAAs are shit -- Wall Street just can't figure out WHICH fraction. hee hee
Sure, there are coffee shops that don't hire those with master's degrees because they're overqualified. But in my experience, most do. And if there AREN'T many other attractive white collar jobs lying around (unless you want to go the debt-penury "activist" route) your overeducated workforce will stay where it is, especially because even educated people need things like health insurance. It's also an attractive bonus to the people who frequent the coffee shops can assuage any liberal angst over class hierarchy by realizing their server is probably better educated than they are. Of course, I understand that Portland OR is unlike the rest of America.
I NED A JOB PLEASE CALL ME 18-736-2061,THANK
I NED A JOB PLEASE CALL ME 18-736-2061,THANK
I NED A JOB PLEASE CALL ME 18-736-2061,THANK
Comments closed June 08, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Ah, but if you are willing to volunteer or can intern, they will be more favorable to you.
As I struggle to find a law job this summer it becomes quite clear to me.
Posted by MNPundit | May 25, 2008 2:29 PM