WaPo: Where have all the summer jobs for teenagers gone?

[marmar]

Where have all the summer jobs for teenagers gone?

By Kate Julian
Sunday, June 6, 2010


Call it the case of the missing summer jobs.

According to Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum, only a third of American 16- to 19-year-olds had a job last summer, the lowest level on record and down from 52 percent a decade ago. The decline began long before the current economic crisis, so high unemployment is not the only culprit. But the question of who is to blame has launched your classic Washington think tank skirmish.

First up, Steven Camarota, a researcher at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tighter restrictions on immigration. In a paper released last month, he points a finger at (yes) immigrants, who often fill the types of low-skill jobs that teenagers have traditionally held.

But in reviewing Camarota's paper, Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, spotted what she considered a glaring omission. "He didn't mention rising summer school enrollment," she told me last week. "It's this massive trend that he just didn't talk about."

Shierholz put out a brief critiquing Camarota's argument: "CIS Analysis of Immigration's Impact on Youth Employment Omits Key Facts." She argued that increased summer school attendance more than accounted for the decline in teen employment. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/04/AR2010060403935.html

[ProSense]

1. WaPo knows they should ask the Republicans who voted

against the Kerry-Murray bill to fund summer jobs

[ProSense]

6. Kerry is still pushing for this legislation

Kerry: Vice President Biden Right to Push for Jobs for Parents in Poverty

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), co-author of the Senate’s legislation to extend the country’s current program to provide jobs for parents in need, today applauded Vice President Joe Biden for using his Middle Class Task Force to help provide employers with strong incentives to hire unemployed workers.

Kerry’s legislation to extend the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Fund, co-authored with Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.), was blocked by Senate Republicans in March. The bill is likely to be taken up again as part of the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act currently before the Senate.

“The middle class is the backbone of our economy, and the road from recession to recovery runs straight through policies to strengthening the middle class,” Sen. Kerry said. “The TANF creates 186,000 jobs to lift poor families out of poverty. Two months ago, Sen. Murray and I offered a common-sense amendment that would extend the TANF Emergency Fund and create hundreds of thousands of summer jobs for our nation’s youth. It would’ve passed if only we’d found a Republican vote. After the recess, we get another crack at passing it, and need to make sure the Senate doesn’t miss another chance to do the right thing for our economy.”

The American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act includes Senator Kerry’s amendment to extend the TANF Emergency Fund for one year and to create 300,000 jobs for youth ages 16 to 24 through summer employment programs.

Massachusetts could receive up to $108 million from the TANF extension to help put struggling families back to work and to provide a vital safety net during this economic downturn. The funding for summer employment programs would create 8,000 jobs for youth in the Commonwealth.

[skeptical cynic]

2. A couple of examples of where the summer jobs went:

A longtime friend and colleague, an engineer, took a job with building supply chain store earning about 1/5 of what he made working as an engineer. He works in the paint department. That might have been a summer job for teenagers.

A neighbor, a project manager, lost his job because of oil industry cutbacks on Alaska's North Slope. He's painting houses now.

[amborin]

3. 35% unemployment in LA's inner city areas for under 30s

[grilled onions]

4. Jobs already filled?

Many adults have been forced to "take away" these jobs that once only teens and those seeking part time work used to do. This was always the excuse of stores that paid piddly wages--because only kids would seek out that kind of work. Now that many who had a decent job now have to work a couple part time jobs doing cashier work or assembling burgers the job market is even more bleak for teens. In the fifties kids easily found work from mowing lawns to sweeping out stores. Those yards are now handled by "landscape crews" and stores multi task their employees, often doing clerking,stocking and bringing in the carts.

[knitter4democracy]

5. My high school students have been complaining about it.

I'm trying to see if I can use two of them as sometime babysitters this summer. They're hoping to get more babysitting time with parents still working over the summer but unable to pay for daycare (summer rates for older kids are really high).

[onethatcares]

7. better question

where have all the jobs for everyone gone?

One day we were cruising along with close to full employment, the next only the banksters had jobs.

WHY?

[AlphaCentauri]

8. Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA, Pub.L. 104-193, 110 Stat. 2105, enacted August 22, 1996) is a United States federal law considered to be a fundamental shift in both the method and goal of federal cash assistance to the poor. The bill was a cornerstone of the Republican Contract With America and was introduced by Rep. E. Clay Shaw, Jr. (R-FL-22) who believed welfare was partly responsible for bringing immigrants to the United States.<1> Bill Clinton signed PRWORA into law on August 22, 1996, fulfilling his 1992 campaign promise to "end welfare as we know it".<2>

PRWORA instituted Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) which became effective July 1, 1997. TANF replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program which had been in effect since 1935 and also supplanted the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS) program of 1988. The law was heralded as a "reassertion of America's work ethic" by the US Chamber of Commerce, largely in response to the bill's workfare component. Some criticized the bill as a reinstitution of workhouses and believe the new system has been ineffective in getting people out of poverty. TANF was reauthorized in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Work_Opportunity_Act

[Donnachaidh]

9. it has become way too impersonal for these kids to find jobs, with online applications

My son has been looking locally, and all of the potential employers insist he fill out forms online. It's far easier for them to turn down teenage applicants, imo. That is also making it very difficult for adults looking for work, because everything gets shuttled through the main office.

Hiring has become an impersonal, mess that is even more demeaning to workers who aren't computer savvy.

[izquierdista]

10. The more demeaning, the better

At least for the haves and the have-mores. They won't be happy until they have pushed brain surgeons and nuclear physicists down to minimum wage -- and then lowered the minimum wage. Saying that you need a job is equivalent to saying that you haven't accumulated any capital, which in the world of capitalism makes you a failure.