Teens aren’t getting summer jobs like they used to — this year could be worse than ever
Teen summer hiring in the US might hit its lowest level since federal tracking began, new report finds.
For generations, American teens spent their summers earning a bit of extra money by lifeguarding at the local pool, scooping ice cream, ringing up groceries, or detasseling corn under the Midwest sun. Now, those jobs are getting harder to find.
According to a new report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, US workers aged 16 to 19 are projected to gain just 790,000 jobs from May through July this year. That would mark the lowest summer hiring total since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the data in 1948, below last summer’s record-low 801,000.
For anyone who’s kept an eye on the numbers, or anyone who’s had trouble getting their teen into the world of work over the last few summers, this season’s slide won’t come as much of a surprise.
Per BLS data, roughly half of American teens were employed during the summer through most of the late 20th century. By 2025, that share had fallen to about a third, meaning that the share of teens who work in summer is just 3.2 percentage points higher than it is for the rest of year — the second-smallest difference on record, only behind the pandemic summer of 2020.
This year, the problem seems less about teens not wanting work than employers pulling back: Challenger found that entertainment and leisure employers like theme parks, resorts, and hotels (the kinds of businesses that typically anchor seasonal teen hiring) announced 70% fewer hiring plans through April than at the same point last year.
School’s in
However, teens haven’t been entirely blameless in the wider shift, especially since the turn of the century. Research from the Brookings Institution found that from 2000 to 2018, the share of teens working or seeking work during the summer fell sharply, while the share enrolled in school and not job-hunting rose almost as much. A separate BLS study also points to school eating into summer jobs, as AP coursework, resume-building, and college prep compete with classic summer vocations.
Meanwhile, teens are also facing more competition in the job market from a higher share of older workers.
Per BLS data, Americans 55 and older are now more likely to be employed than teens, a flip that happened around the Great Recession and has held ever since. While that doesn’t necessarily mean older workers are simply taking teen jobs, a 2017 BLS study found older workers have gained share in food service, sales, and office support — job categories younger workers have historically dominated — while teens lost ground in all three.
