The summer job going extinct

By Courtney Dye, CONTRIBUTOR

The part-time summer job is becoming extinct. In the early 2000’s, it was fairly common for high schoolers and college students to work a part-time job over the summer break. This trend has slowly decreased over the last decade.
Since the recession hit in 2007, less than thirty-five percent of young adults hold summer jobs, according to Drew Desilver of the Pew Research Center. One reason for the decline is because they struggle to find jobs and if they are able to find one, it does not come with sufficient hours.
The decrease in young adults finding summer work is in relation to there being fewer entry level, low skill jobs available, such as retail positions or office work, according to Drew Desilver of the Pew Research Center.
Another reason it is harder for young adults to find summer jobs is due to the increase in the minimum wage. The increase in the minimum wage has led to older job seekers, foreign workers and underpaid working college graduates taking jobs that once would have gone to high schoolers and college students.
Forty years ago, thirteen percent of people working in the labor force were over sixty-five years of age, according to Roy Maurer of Society for Human Resource Management. Now, this percentage has gone up twenty percent. The most common type of summer job available to young people is in the food industry. Maurer also reported that in the late 1990’s about twenty-five percent of food service workers were teens. Now the percentage has decreased to sixteen percent.
Summer jobs are important for the younger generation, not only because they provide experience in the employment sector, but also because many job seekers are students who need to make money to pay for college.
Many students need to raise funds when they have time to work in the summer to pay upcoming tuition and related school incidentals, as well as pay for necessities such as food and gas. Part-time summer jobs allow them to make money so they can pay for some of the expenses that come with being a young adult.