Why Teens Are Struggling to Find Summer Jobs

Joslyne Baird has been looking for a job for about a year to help her family pay the bills.

She began her job search at 14 years old, applying to summer camps and grocery stores around her small Kentucky town of about 1,500 people, without success, she told The Epoch Times.

“I’m looking for babysitting jobs, mowing jobs, cleaning jobs, and so much more,” the now 15-year-old said. “Anything I’m able to do to make money for, I will do.”

Baird has not heard back from a single employer to which she submitted applications, she said.

What the Kentucky teenager is experiencing is a continuation of a trend that began in 2025: a worsening job market for American teens looking for summer work.

Experts accurately predicted last summer to be the toughest on record, and forecasted this one to be even worse, which some teenagers feel is true.

Whether it’s waiting tables, bagging groceries, or stocking shelves, a summer job is one of many rites of passage into adulthood as kids seek more responsibility, less parental oversight, and their own money to spend, but experts say these roles typically filled by teens are fading.

However, there still exists a path to making money, some teenagers told The Epoch Times, even if it means becoming your own boss.

Job Search Struggles

Baird is one of 12 siblings and described herself as patient, caring, responsible, and mature—all attributes a hiring manager would look for in a teenage employee.

“I have not heard back from anybody,” Baird said. “I want a job because my family has been struggling a lot with money, and I would really like to help them.”

She has applied to many jobs over the course of about a year but to no avail.

Younger teenagers between the ages of 13 and 15 are more limited in their options due to the complexity of arranging transportation to get to work.

“Now that I’m 15, I’m hoping that people are willing to hire me since I’m older,” Baird said. “I’m very hopeful on my job search.”

Even older teenagers who are able to drive on their own described similar struggles.

Olivia Watson, 18, is going into her senior year in high school and looking for a part-time job. 

She’s heard back from a few employers and participated in some interviews but has not yet landed a position.

“Most employers are looking for employees with experience, which makes it difficult for young adults like me to find work,” Watson, of Calhoun, Louisiana, said. “But also, most young adults are less motivated than others, so employers don’t take young adults seriously, especially where I’m from.”

Like Baird, Watson has applied for many jobs, including at local businesses, bakeries, retail stores, and restaurants, and she has applied for some customer service roles.

The Louisiana-based teen said she’s been searching for a job for about a month, spending ample amounts of time filling out applications and following up with employers to try to make herself stand out as a candidate.

“Even though it’s been challenging, I believe that if I keep applying, working hard, and staying positive, I’ll eventually find a job that’s a good fit for me,” Watson said.

Watson said she wants to earn her own money to save for her future, help pay her own expenses, gain experience to prepare for adulthood, and ultimately become more independent.

Asked about whether she believed expert predictions about this summer becoming the worst on record for the teenage job market, she said she and many friends, who are also looking for similar jobs, are finding this to be true.

“Some have found jobs, but many are having the same experience I am—submitting lots of applications without hearing back or waiting a long time for interviews,” Watson said. “It seems like finding a job has become much more competitive than many of us expected.”

Job Search Success

Amid a worsening job market for teens, some are tapping into their entrepreneurial side to make money.

Tyler Brock was born and raised in rural Duplin County, North Carolina. He began working at 10 years old for a farmer up the road because he wanted gas money for his four-wheeler and to go bowling with friends.

“At that point in time, I was still doing stuff like that,” Brock said. “But when I started my company, I [had] a one-track mind, and it was ‘let’s see how hard we can work and how much we can accomplish.’”

Eight years later, Brock is the owner of Tyler’s Lawn Care, which services about 80 properties, and is a partial owner with his father in a trucking business.

Brock also recently bought a hog farm.

“I’ve always loved working, and that’s something my dad has always instilled in me—hard work and dedication,” Brock told The Epoch Times. “There’s no time to complain.”

Brock’s hog farm is capable of holding up to 2,600 hogs, and he is partnered with Smithfield Foods, a food-processing company in Virginia.

The company owns the pigs and gives them to Brock when they’re about 13 pounds. He cares for them until they’re anywhere from 45 to 270 pounds, at which point they’re ready to be taken to a processing facility.

He described all business ventures as a “dream” and a “blessing.”

“I would get up, go to school, go to football practice, or whatever sport we were in, I’d leave there, and I’d go work,” Brock said. “I can’t stand sitting still, and most of the people my age, they like to game—I don’t know how to run an Xbox controller.”

Eventually, Brock said he quit sports to pursue work.

There were times he considered giving up and struggled with work, but there also have been moments of wild success and deep fulfillment, he said.

Jay Edouard, a 19-year-old from Long Island, New York, has a similar entrepreneurial spirit.

He told The Epoch Times his first job, technically, was selling candy to classmates in middle school. Edouard wanted to make money because he felt regretful asking his parents for some while growing up. He also said he wanted to buy new Jordan sneakers.

“I thought it would be easier, better for me to make my own money, so they can’t tell me no,” Edouard said. “My dad, even my mom, they loved that at a young age I just started to make my own money or at least try.”

Once he entered high school, Edouard found work in landscaping businesses and shoveling snow. He and his friends used to enjoy the snow and play in it until they found out they could make money from it, Edouard said.

Eventually, he signed up for MyTeenGig, a website that connects teenagers to homeowners who will pay them to complete a chore around their home.

“They have all sorts of things on there,” Edouard said. “Regular yard work, or even, at one time, we had to move a hot tub.”

Toughest Summer on Record

Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, an outplacement firm, predicted the job market for youths this summer to fall to its worst pace in nearly 80 years.

Since teen hiring fell to its lowest level on record in the summer of 2025, “the headwinds facing teen workers have only intensified,” the firm said in its teen summer jobs outlook.

“We predicted a quiet summer last year, and it played out even quieter than expected. The dynamics that drove that slowdown … are all still in place,” according to the report. 

The firm used Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data to forecast teens gaining 790,000 jobs through May, June, and July, which would be down from last year’s 801,000.

If the prediction comes true, this summer would mark the lowest teen hiring total since the BLS began tracking the data in 1948.

The previous record prior to last summer occurred in 1949, during World War II demobilization, when the BLS recorded teen summer jobs at 932,000. The next lowest mark came in 2010, amid recovery from the Great Recession, at 960,000.

“Last summer was the weakest summer for teen hiring we have ever recorded,” the report said. “What is striking is that it happened without a recession.”

In April, there were nearly 5.2 million teenagers aged 16 to 19 employed. That was down from about 5.5 million last year.

BLS data show the unemployment rate for teenagers 16 to 19 years old has fluctuated over the past few months. April’s rate was 14.4 percent, May was 14.7 percent, and June was 14.6 percent.

Unemployment for this age group peaked in April 2020 at 32.8 percent, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

When the BLS began tracking its data in January 1948, the labor force participation rate for 16- to 19- year-olds was 53.2 percent. The peak came in August 1978 at 59.3 percent, and the trough was April 2020 at 29.8 percent.

Robin Crumpler is involved in several businesses in North Carolina—Surf City, Bealeville, and Jacksonville—where he has historically hired teens to work, including in construction and at a sandwich shop. He grew up during the peak of the labor participation rate for teens 16 to 19.

“My generation, I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, we all had jobs. Everybody I grew up with had jobs, mostly farming because we live in a farm community. I did construction,” Crumpler said. “There’s a mindset that you’re not just gonna sit at home.”

As of the latest data from June, the labor participation rate for older teens was 35.4 percent. 

Why Aren’t Employers Hiring Teens?

Teenagers are facing several obstacles contributing to their difficulty in finding summer jobs, including inflation and rising fuel costs that are squeezing the same households and small businesses that hire them, according to the Challenger, Gray, and Christmas report.

Other obstacles include artificial intelligence and automation replacing entry-level positions that once served as the vast majority of teens’ first jobs, such as cashiering, customer service, and inventory checks.

Teenagers are also competing for positions against more experienced candidates.

Older workers are increasingly putting off retirement or returning to the workforce after retiring, searching for the same part-time or seasonal positions that teenagers would take.

“I’ve spent time filling out applications, following up with employers, and trying to make myself stand out as a candidate,” Watson said. “Employers often want people with previous experience, which can be frustrating for teens who are trying to get their first job.”

Teenagers today also have different priorities than previous generations did.

“This isn’t the teen workforce of the 1980s,” the Challenger, Gray, and Christmas report noted. 

Younger generations are inundated with internships, academic programs, year-round club sports, content creation, and video games.

According to the latest Pew Research poll from May 2024 on teenagers’ video game use, 85 percent of teens reported they play video games. Four in 10 thought of themselves as a gamer and played daily.

Options for Teens

Most teenagers have a larger network than they realize, as parents, family friends, coaches, and others can provide potential connections to part-time jobs while vouching for a teen’s character or work ethic.

Experts advise teens to try to stand out above their peers: have a resume, dress neatly, arrive ahead of time, and practice manners. 

Blue-collar jobs, involving construction, cement, roofing, farm work, and more, are not positions at risk of being taken by AI or older workers.

“My construction business during the summers, I’ll [hire teens], but there’s not many of them that want to do it,” Crumpler said.

He reflected on the first job he ever had while living in Florida at 8 and 9 years old.

He walked his neighborhood with a push lawn mower, a gallon of gasoline, and an electric weed eater offering $1.50 for yard service. He once tried charging $2.50 for a larger lawn and was yelled at by the homeowner, he recalled.

“Times have changed, but either way, there is definitely not a priority [among teens searching for work],” Crumpler said.

At his sandwich shop, called Subs Up To-Go in Surf City, he’s looking to employ three to six teenagers as young as 14 years old. Crumpler already has two teens on staff.

“Surf City, traditionally, we have a shortage,” Crumpler said about the local workforce. “Most of the businesses during the summertime are struggling to find help.”

Kerri Romeo, a pediatric physician assistant of 28 years from Long Island, New York, told The Epoch Times that teens don’t only have to work for shops, restaurants, or businesses. She created MyTeenGig, which Edouard uses, to pair teens up with elderly or busy homeowners who have a myriad of undesirable or labor-intensive tasks around their homes, such as pressure washing, pulling weeds, raking leaves, cleaning out an attic, clearing gutters, or shoveling snow.

Romeo came up with the idea two winters ago and launched in April.

“My youngest teenager really wanted to shovel snow,” Romeo said. “There’s no way to connect [teens] to all these neighbors that needed their driveways and their sidewalks plowed or shoveled. The only way that I was able to find them was through Facebook, which teenagers aren’t on.”

Her website has expanded since its launch, stretching over multiple states and now including business postings for teenagers.

There’s listings for servers, hostesses, lifeguards, bridal shops, salons, and more, Romeo said. Older teens are offering tutoring services too.

“The homeowner decides the price,” Romeo said. “So the homeowner will say, ‘I’m looking for an algebra tutor. I’m willing to pay $50. Is there a teen out there that wants to do that for me?’ And then the teen applies.”

Teenagers have a biography page on the website that job posters can review to decide which teen to accept for a task. Both teens and job posters give each other public reviews.

Those 17 and younger must have a parental guardian linked to their account who gets final approval on whether their child can perform a task or not.

“I’m especially excited about the snow shoveling season,” she said. “[Teens] could walk 0.5 miles away or get dropped off 0.5 miles away, and say, ‘Mom, come back in an hour. I’ll text you when to come back for me to pick me up. I’m going to shovel this snow.’”

As exemplified by Brock and Edouard, teenagers don’t have to take the typical path of working for a business over the summer. There are endless opportunities available for teens to make money while honing work ethic, gaining real-world experience, and helping people.

When asked about what advice Brock would give other teens his age or younger, he said to take a risk because they’re young enough to be able to bounce back.

Similarly, Edouard said teenagers need to use their resources and network. Sometimes, all it takes is being in the right place or talking to the right person.

“My goal within the next five or six years is maybe buy an excavator or skid steer, maybe get into a little bit of land clearing,” Brock said. “I think I’ll go till I can’t go no more. … I wouldn’t have it no other way.”

“The ultimate end goal for me is to start a business … landscaping,” Edouard said. “Buying tools, making flyers and stuff, getting more people in the neighborhood with contracts.”