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When he hires CEOs for his Texas-based fast food chain, Layne’s Chicken Fingers, Garrett Reed is usually looking for people with seven or ten years of work experience. But this year he ended up promoting Jason Cabrera, 19, with a salary of $ 50,000 plus bonuses.
“Even my parents think I’m too young to be a GM, but I don’t let my age be a factor in anything,” Cabrera said.
Cabrera is one of them 5.9 m Young people aged 16 to 19 who take advantage of the shortage of adult workers to find work this summer. Adolescents accounted for 36 percent of new hires in June, compared to an average of 10 percent over the same period from 2017 to 2019, according to an analysis of U.S. labor data by payroll provider small businesses.
“The most experienced workers disappeared during Covid,” Reed said. “It has forced us to take on younger people who can step up and take on those roles.”
Fewer American teens are out of work this summer than at any time in the last six decades, in the labor department data shows, in a sign of how teenagers are taking advantage of what economists say is a rare opportunity to occupy better-paid positions, usually reserved for adults.
According to a survey by Gusto, the salaries of adolescents working in the services sector have increased by 13% in the last two months.
The trend is part of a larger shift in power among low-wage workers and their employers during the pandemic. Reopening companies are desperate to hire staff, as ongoing fears about the Covid crisis, lack of childcare and the temporary expansion of unemployment insurance prevent many Uber waiters, cashiers and drivers from returning. to the staff.
Those who are willing to go back to work work the competition to demand higher wages and better working conditions.
Companies that traditionally shied away from hiring minors because of state mandates to obtain employment permits and limited working hours have welcomed them as older and more experienced workers remain scarce.
“Teenagers are the name of the game in hiring and have been able to dictate the conditions of their work,” Gusto economist Luke Pardue said.
The number of working American teens fell steadily for decades before the pandemic, as volunteer and college readiness programs gained popularity. But Covid eliminated many of those opportunities or forced them to connect, said Northeastern University economist Alicia Sasser Modestino.
Young people who were already working lost their jobs en masse last summer, as the leisure and hospitality companies that usually hire them are tightening under Covid restrictions. This has made many of them want to work this summer, while others are drawn to the unusually high wages and generous incentives employers have hung to attract workers.
“Teenagers are ready to take up these jobs and employers, desperate, are reducing their needs,” Modestino said.
Alonzo Soliz, owner of a Tropical Smoothie Cafe franchise in Cedar Park, Texas, says about 40 of its 45 employees are teenagers and are still looking to hire more.
“They come in and ask for $ 10, $ 12 an hour, no weekends and they have no experience,” Soliz said. “What’s difficult is that a lot of times we have to pay them this because they’ll jump to the side for a dollar more.”
Last week Soliz interviewed an experienced teenager working at a pizzeria to get a shift leader position. He did what he thought was a competitive offer (about $ 15 per hour plus paid free time and up to $ 2,000 in tuition reimbursement), but he never knew anything. He suspects he got a better deal.
However, the full labor market has not raised wages for all adolescents equally. Young people of color still have relatively high unemployment rate compared to white adolescents. Many have also been excluded from the workplace geographically, as low-wage jobs have returned first to suburban areas and vacation towns with a disproportionately white population over urban areas, Pardue said.
For those who have taken effects, their benefits may be limited. Adult workers are expected to return to the workforce en masse in September as extended unemployment benefits expire and face-to-face schooling resumes.
But some employers expect to cling to their younger workers. Toni Reese, owner of the Running Lab specialty store in Brighton, Michigan, said that despite never hiring anyone under the age of 30 before the pandemic, the store hired five teens this summer and is looking for more.
“They’re our most hungry employees and they’re a lot of fun,” Reese says.
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