Why did teenagers stop getting jobs?

[Slargos]

Just because people have always been moaning about how the youth are spineless layabouts doesn't mean that it isn't true now.

Sweden has a record high 30% unemployment rate among the 18-25 category, and in Norway there is a wide-spread belief among younger people that they are "too good" for menial labour and so a lot of positions go unfilled simply because there is no available manpower.

[grumbler]

I raised the point a long time ago, but it seemed to have been overlooked:

Could the graph not simply reflect that graduation rates have increased quite a bit over the last 30 years?  That the decrease in youth employment is because more youths are staying in school, rather than leaving school and trying to work full time at age 16 (as once happened more frequently)?

I suspect the conversation about after school part time jobs is missing the main part of the story.

Graduation rates have not increased significantly since 1999, the year the real falloff started.  In fact, graduation rates peaked in the US in 1969, when the youth employment rate was 24%.  Last year the employment rate was 6% and the graduation rate 66.8% (http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/06/10/34swanson.h29.html).

I think we need to find another answer.

[Jacob]

Sweden has a record high 30% unemployment rate among the 18-25 category, and in Norway there is a wide-spread belief among younger people that they are "too good" for menial labour and so a lot of positions go unfilled simply because there is no available manpower.

The obvious answer is to turn to immigrants to fill those jobs, then.

[Barrister]

I dunno man - I remember 20 years ago (1991 - was it really that long ago) when all the talk was that Gen X was a bunch of slackers, how we were destined to have no job opportunities (or what job opportunities there were would be McJobs).

Kind of like what a lot of you are saying right now.

[Barrister]

I raised the point a long time ago, but it seemed to have been overlooked:

Could the graph not simply reflect that graduation rates have increased quite a bit over the last 30 years?  That the decrease in youth employment is because more youths are staying in school, rather than leaving school and trying to work full time at age 16 (as once happened more frequently)?

I suspect the conversation about after school part time jobs is missing the main part of the story.

Graduation rates have not increased significantly since 1999, the year the real falloff started.  In fact, graduation rates peaked in the US in 1969, when the youth employment rate was 24%.  Last year the employment rate was 6% and the graduation rate 66.8% (http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/06/10/34swanson.h29.html).

I think we need to find another answer.

Well, I'm not quite ready to give up on my answer - but we'd need to know more about what is measured as "participation rates", what proportion is PT vs FT employment, etc.

To me the chart looks like a steady decline from 1978 or thereabouts.

[jimmy olsen]

My first thought was that teens in high school are less likely to get a job because legal limits on what types of work can be done by people under age 18 and what hours they are allowed to work have gotten so much more restrictive.  But a most of those restrictions were put in place more than 30 years ago, during a time that the chart shows workforce participation by 16-19 year olds increasing, so that's not it, at least not directly.  (Many of the other theories mentioned in this thread don't fit the time-line very well, either.)   Indirectly, maybe it does have some impact, due to businesses staying open later.  Back around the time that I was senior in high school, very few businesses, even fast food places (which have long been a common place to find school kids working part time), stayed open past 8 or 9 PM during the schoolweek, so they were able to hire 17 year olds as closers, even with the legal restrictions on how late they could be at work.  Now, most of the fast food places are open till 11 or midnight, and they can't hire school kids to close anymore.

I worked at McDonalds when I was 17 and I closed all the time.

[Ed Anger]

Damn pledge to not pick on Tim... 

[Barrister]

Damn pledge to not pick on Tim... 

[Ed Anger]

Damn pledge to not pick on Tim... 

You won't see me do that again.

[MadImmortalMan]

As for teenage jobs, there's not much that I can say, it's something that it's not done at all over here in the way that you describe it

What do you do instead? Does nobody in Spain work while at university? That's how I avoided racking up insane debt.

[Slargos]

Sweden has a record high 30% unemployment rate among the 18-25 category, and in Norway there is a wide-spread belief among younger people that they are "too good" for menial labour and so a lot of positions go unfilled simply because there is no available manpower.

The obvious answer is to turn to immigrants to fill those jobs, then.

Depends on what kind of immigrants.

Somalis certainly aren't filling any jobs.

http://sverigedemokratermotrasism.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/migrationsverket-redovisar-invandringstyper-och-forsoker-sla-hal-pa-myter/

Average time it takes "an immigrant" to get a job is 7 years. Taking into account that the amount of work required to fullfill the statistical status of being "in employment" is an average of one hour per week.

Taking into account that most western immigrants will have no more trouble finding a job than Swedes, and in fact a lot of the time have specialist knowledge that will land them among the working faster, that average looks pretty bleak.

See, I don't pull these numbers from thin air, even if they seem incredulous and insane enough that you'd suspect it.

[grumbler]

Well, I'm not quite ready to give up on my answer - but we'd need to know more about what is measured as "participation rates", what proportion is PT vs FT employment, etc.

Why would you give up an answer based on assumptions merely because facts get in the way?   This is Languish!

"Labor force participation rate
    The labor force as a percent of the civilian noninstitutional population."
http://www.bls.gov/bls/glossary.htm

FT versus PT isn't accounted for - this is simply percentage of people not in the military, prisons, and whatnot who are employed at all.

To me the chart looks like a steady decline from 1978 or thereabouts.

Nope; if you look closely, you will see that, for instance, 1985 has a higher participation rate than 1984, it trends upward until 1989, then drops to a plateau around 23% in 1995-1999, and then drops pretty steadily.  My link gives the graduation rates, which bear no resemblance. 

[HisMajestyBOB]

I don't know if it's just don't to the moral fibre of kids these days.

My younger siblings definitely had the Stonewall style "you will have a job" requirement from back home and they have at times struggled to find jobs.  This has certainly impacted their life - how well they lived during uni, and their ability to do the kind of things they'd like to do (travel, shop, etc) - and they haven't beeh able to fall back on an ever dripping parental teat, so to speak.

My suspicion is that economic conditions have changed and the pool of jobs available to students is smaller.

That said, I'm sure there are other factors as well and there are, without a doubt, some people out there who are irredeemably spoiled brats.

I suppose many people arent' retiring probably because they can't afford to.

I definitely think the economy is a factor. When unemployment is high, there's fewer entry-level positions available and a lot more skilled workers in the job market. Heck, I have work experience from high school (cutting grass), college (internship), and two years teaching abroad, and I can't even get an admin assistant or secretarial job these days, much less anything that would start a career. Burger flipping would give me cash, but I couldn't afford a house around here on that. Now I'm looking at teaching abroad (can't afford schooling for a teaching degree here) or OCS.

It would also explain older people working more - if your IRA took a big dive because of the housing crash and you're 60+, your only option is to keep working.

[MadImmortalMan]

Average time it takes "an immigrant" to get a job is 7 years.

Come on, you know that's BS. They're working, just not officially.

[Slargos]

Average time it takes "an immigrant" to get a job is 7 years.

Come on, you know that's BS. They're working, just not officially.

A possibility, but nowhere near a certainty.

The welfare provided is pretty hefty.

In fact, an immigrant mother of 6 gets more in welfare contributions than most people make after taxes on an above-averagely well paid job.

If they are in fact working they are in that case not paying any taxes but also getting welfare in addition to their salaries.

This is Sweden, not the US. You can live comfortably off the government teat here.