Summer jobs for teenagers have been disappearing, and Harvard professor Roland Fryer has some explanations. He quickly dismissies many of the reasons given: AI, tariffs, and gas prices. He reminds us that the classic summer job has been disappearing for nearly half a century. “Tariffs and oil tankers don’t explain four decades of teenagers walking away from jobs they could have had.”

His explanation is simple: “The price of a teenager’s time changed, sharply. The wage premium a college degree brings roughly doubled between the late 1970s and 2000.” There is a much higher opportunity cost for a teenager bagging groceries, taking fast food orders, or folding shirts.

Part of the equation is the minimum wage. As I have documented in previous commentaries, the value of the dollar declined, and wages have not kept up. That is also true of the minimum wage which is now worth less than half of what it was in the late 1960s.

Affluent teenagers looking for better resumes are another reason. “She trades the lifeguard chair for a research internship, science camp, an SAT tutor.” Economists have found the greatest decline among students from educated, affluent households.

Teenagers from poorer families who do need a summer job face the reality of a shrinking pool of work opportunities in the private sector. They also faced shrinking opportunities in the public sector. The New York City’s summer-jobs program drew 200,000 applications for the 100,000 slots available.

Those of us who had summer jobs realized that there were benefits beyond a paycheck. We learned to get up early, work hard, and be responsible. The disappearing summer job is another sad statistic and the reason we need creative people to construct solutions.