The decline of the summer job

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

Getting a summer job used to be almost mandatory for teens as a way to build starter bank accounts and, sometimes, character. In my case, these jobs included such activities as mowing lawns, delivering newspapers, cutting back shrubs, painting fences, processing bills of lading at a trucking company on the Boston waterfront, working as a counselor at a camp for inner-city kids, waiting on tables and other, usually tedious, activities. 

Things have changed a lot: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported that in July 2016 only 43 percent of those 16 to 19 were working or trying to get a job. In the late ‘80s the rate was nearly 70 percent. (I suspect that it was even higher than that in my time as summer worker – ’62-’69.)

But the refusal of successive Republican Congresses to raise the minimum wage, the arrival of illegal aliens to perform many jobs, especially yard work, house painting and other very physical labor, has discouraged many young people from even trying to get a job. And the days when you could pay for college with summer earnings alone are long gone.

At the same time, affluent parents now  tend to encourage their teens to accumulate assorted extracurricular experiences, including travel, and to take summer courses to promote themselves in order to get into a “good college’’ rather than get a job.  It used to be that well-off and even many rich parents would push their offspring to get summer jobs as a useful introduction to the world of work, where they’d learn how to deal with bosses and colleagues and to manage money.

You don’t hear much about character-building anymore. The results of its absence are all around and extend from the White House to your neighborhood.