The employment rate among teenagers is incredibly dismal.
I know this first hand, since I have teens at home and teenage nieces and
nephews who cannot find work. There’s an irritating theme that runs through
family conversations about our unemployed teens, and the words I hear most
often are “lazy” and “entitled.”
“I had a paper route when I
was their age,” one of the older members of the family will tell me, every time
we get together. “They need to get out and hustle. Walk the neighborhood, mow
lawns, weed gardens. There’s lots of jobs out there for teens.”
“They should get roofing jobs,” another family member exclaimed.
“When I was a teenager in high school the dreamiest guys were the summertime
roofers, since they had the most gorgeous tans. And they had the best bodies, too!”
The attitude towards teens today is one of disdain for the
luxuries they enjoy and their lack of a good work ethic. Teens are
spoiled, lazy, unwilling to work hard. Do you believe this?
Listen up, older people. The world isn’t the same now as it was
then, and that’s not good. Not good for our teens and not good for our future.
The days of the paper route are gone. Here are the three reasons why
teens can’t get jobs today, and why this is terrible for America.
1. High
Unemployment
Unemployment among adults is reportedly at 7.3%
but is actually much higher.
The real unemployment figures are probably as high as 14%.
Your teen is competing with adults for that first job. Teenagers
have few skills, an undeveloped work ethic, and no experience. The adults
looking for the same work are experienced, they have communication skills and
they’re desperate. Employers aren’t in the market of giving out charity jobs to
inexperienced teens who haven’t figured out how to show up to work on time.
They need good workers and they need them immediately. They have them. They
have more than they need. Your teen doesn’t have a chance, and the employment
figures show it. The teenage unemployment rate is a staggering 24%.
2.
Illegal immigrants take jobs “Americans just won’t do.”
I live in Colorado. If you want your lawn mowed, you call a
service and once a week a truck will unload two or three incredibly
hard-working Hispanics who will mow, weed, and cart off the grass clippings in
less than an hour.
You don’t have to deal with a lazy American kid who pauses in the
middle of the job to set up a different playlist on his iPod. No haphazard
weeding or indifferent weed-wacking. No missing a mowing day because they’re
sick or have other plans.
This Mayhem advertisement is your worst nightmare of a lawn-mowing
teenager:
Then there’s roofers. Instead of the high schoolers who once
filled this industry, hammering their thumbs, spilling roofing tacks and
working on their tans during every possible break time, you have a team of men
who show up, work hard, eat their lunches quietly under the shade of your tree,
and finish the job in a single day.
House painting was a favorite summer time occupation for teenagers
and college kids. That’s gone. Carpet installation? Gone. My brothers once
spent a summer painting telephone poles with creosote to preserve them. Gone.
All of these jobs are filled with immigrants, many of them illegal, who get
paid much less than teens, do an excellent job, and complain not at all.
3.
Minimum wage has destroyed the lower rungs of the ladder to success.
Menial construction labor, like carting off small debris from a
construction floor or sweeping it, doesn’t deserve a minimum wage. It barely
requires brain cells at all, which means it’s a perfect entry level job for a
teenager who has no developed work ethic, no skills, and no experience. But
minimum wage laws requires a company to pay far more than these jobs are worth,
so companies have removed these jobs altogether. They’ll hire a service
instead, or have one of their more highly-skilled workers spend time on these
tasks.
When my brother worked for a fast food chain (Mr. Clown) in high
school, the manager employed a whole crew of high school students who were
assigned dinky shifts at odd times. There’s no way this could support someone
as a “living wage.” The purpose was to have lots of backup for teenagers who
hadn’t figured out how to show up to work on time. If a teenager missed more
than a few shifts, they were reluctantly fired. After the teen realized they
really liked the spending money, they’d go to work at the other fast food chain
right down the street (Mr. Crown), and eventually develop the skills they
needed to keep a job. This low step on the ladder of success has been removed
because of high minimum wage laws. If you don’t have the skills to do a good
job, you’re not hired. Teens most often do not have those skills, and now they
aren’t given the chance to learn them. Brad Hamilton of Fast Times at Ridgemont High doesn’t
get hired as a fast food worker any more, not even one dressed as a pirate.
High unemployment, illegal immigration, and the minimum wage has
destroyed the labor market for teenagers, and this is terrible. Why?
Why do
our teens need jobs?
Teenagers need a job because they need practice. They’re not worth
very much as workers. They’re lazy, scatterbrained, unable to remember
instructions and have no callouses on their soft hands. So really, why would
anyone want to hire these unformed humans and begin the arduous process of
turning them into skilled and eager workers?
Because
our very future depends on it.
How did the hard workers of my parents’ generation and our
generation become that way? They began as teenagers have throughout human history,
by working with adults and learning from them, and don’t be fooled by their
boastful memories. They started out just as lazy as our teenagers today. I
guarantee you there were Lakota Indian teens who had to be rolled out of their
warm buffalo hides on a chilly morning to go deer hunting. Skills, work ethic,
the profound satisfaction of doing a job well–these are all learned. They don’t
come as if by magic to teenagers. They have to be taught by adults.
Our culture has removed this important step from our teenagers’
lives and that harm carries from their teen years into their professional
future. My brother interviews job applicants who have graduated from college
and has expressed profound worries about the abilities of these newly-minted
professionals. They don’t understand how to come in to work on time, how to
stay at work all day, how to focus on a task and complete it. They’re more
worried about their social media, their benefits package, and their workplace.
Mark Bauerlein of Bloomberg News: “In the 2011 survey, 40 percent of
employers cited ‘inadequate basic employability skills’ as a reason for why
they can’t hire and keep workers.” They have no work ethic. They’re stunted.
Teens need to learn the joy to be found in hard work. They need to
work on a roofing crew all summer and bandage blisters on their hands. They
need to wipe down a diner counter after closing time with their feet aching.
They need, desperately, to linger over a broom and watch a skilled glazer or
bricklayer move through their task with such grace that it gives them
goosebumps. Our teens need these experiences. They need to know the
satisfaction of doing hard work and earning money for it and feeling that glow
inside them that means they’ve accomplished something. We are failing our
entire society by not providing it for them, and we are depriving our teenagers
of the tools they need to succeed in their adult lives.
We need to make those first steps on the economic ladder available
to our teenagers, those lazy, entitled, scatterbrained darlings. They don’t
stay that way long, if they’re just given a chance.
Bonnie Ramthun lives in Colorado with her
husband and children. She's the author of mysteries and thrillers for adults
and children. Her middle grade mystery "The White Gates' was a Junior
Library Guild premiere selection and was a finalist for the Missouri Truman
award.
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