Kerby Anderson

If you ask people around you about summer jobs they have held, you will notice a generation gap. The older people will recall some of the jobs they held as teenagers. The younger people may not have had any summer jobs.

Forty years ago, nearly 60 percent of U.S. teenagers were working or looking for work during the summer months. Last year, that percentage was just 35 percent. Some of that decline is due to the lack of summer jobs, but much of it is due to fewer teenagers looking for a summer job.

Karl Vick writing in Time magazine says that Jenkinson’s Boardwalk went looking for seasonal employees last year. In order to fill some 1200 summer vacancies, they held an Easter-time job fair that drew just 400 people. More and more summer jobs are either going unfilled or being filled by foreign students or family and friends.

If teenagers aren’t working, what are they doing? Of course, some are chilling out in front of television and video games. But many more are busy, but they aren’t working at summer jobs. They may be doing volunteer work or doing an internship. Those activities look good on resumes for students trying to get into the college of their choice.

Many are taking summer school classes. Summer school used to be for the students who did not do well in school and needed enough hours to graduate. Karl Vick explains that many more students are taking courses as an academic accelerator. Last July, 40 percent of 16-to-19-year-olds were enrolled in summer school.

Other students are playing sports. Youth sports have now expanded into a year-round, all-consuming activity for kids and parents. Many simply would not have time for a summer job because their scheduled lives are full of games and tournaments.

Sadly, many students won’t learn the valuable lessons many of us learned in our summer jobs.