Summer Jobs Scarce for Teens

I began searching for a job in February, the month I turned 18, by applying to my two favorite stores. My biggest concern was figuring out what to do if I were offered both jobs – a distinct possibility in my mind. 

But by the beginning of May, when I had yet to receive a job offer, I began canvassing the streets of downtown San Rafael, dropping into every business to ask if they were hiring.

To my surprise, all the answers were negative. Shop owners, with faraway looks in their eyes, told me they had to lay off employees to make ends meet. Coffee shop managers explained that it was too expensive to train an inexperienced teenager who would be leaving for college at summer's end. Some shopkeepers looked at me with disdain. One suggested I try Craigslist.

According to the U. S. Census Bureau, teen summer employment rates have steadily declined for the past 10 years. In 2000, nearly 52 percent of teenagers held summer jobs. By 2009, the most recent year available, the number had shrunk to less than 33 percent. 

Judging from the experience of recent San Rafael high school graduates looking for work this summer before heading off to college, the teen summer employment rate for 2010 will be even lower than last summer's. 

The unpleasant truth in the current economic downturn is that more people are looking for work with fewer jobs to go around. Before hiring teen-agers looking for summer work, employers are more likely to hire laid-off workers and people who planned to retire but whose savings shrunk when they were supposed to expand.

Lissa Stolte, who lives in San Rafael and graduated in June from Tthe Branson School, became acutely aware of the challenging job market for teen-agers when she began her job hunt in May. She scrolled through dozens of retail Web sites and Craigslist classifieds, applying for every job she could find. To her frustration, she received only negative responses.

"They would tell me I looked like a qualified applicant, but because I was leaving at the end of the summer, it wouldn't be worth it to train me," she said. 

Stolte, 18, finally landed a job as a cashier at a CVS/Pharmacy by promising to continue working for the corporation during the holiday season when she returns home from Indiana, where she will be attending the University of Notre Dame. "The job is kinda boring," she said. "I pretty much stand in the same place for eight hours every day. But interacting with people is fun. And I get paid." 

Not all teen-agers have been as lucky as Stolte. Evan Curhan spent every weekday in May working for free in a San Rafael dive shop as part of his senior high school internship. On his first day, the shop owner told him, "If you're good, we'll probably be able to give you a summer job." 

However, at the end of May, the dive shop owner said business had taken a turn for the worse, and he could not afford to employ Curhan over the summer. Curhan, who lives in Corte Madera and will be a freshman at Dartmouth College in the fall, later learned that the dive shop had instead opted to hire an older worker who was not leaving for college. 

Curhan applied for a variety of other jobs but continued to hear that he was unemployable due to his upcoming departure. While he acknowledges that perhaps he should have begun searching for summer work earlier in the year, he also believes the economy might have worked against him in any event. "The difference between this year and other years is that in prior years, I would have found something," he sayid. "This year, I couldn't find anything."

To earn enough to pay for his summer gas and entertainment, Curhan has taken up babysitting, posting fliers around Marin County to advertise his credentials. 

But because parents have less disposal income, even babysitting and camp counseling jobs, once classic teen-age summer opportunities, are becoming increasingly difficult to find.

Jaime Morgen of San Rafael began searching for a summer camp job in December. Between her three prior years of counselor training at Walton's Grizzly Lodge overnight camp and her unique training as a children's dance instructor, Morgen, 18, thought she would land a job in no time. 

Even she had trouble. Camp managers told her that past counselors were clinging to their jobs from previous summers, and the camps would be unable to hire new staff. 

The Osher Marin Jewish Community Center's Camp Kehillah finally offered Morgen, who will be a freshman at Tufts University in the fall, a job as one of five new counselors. Although employed, Morgen can still see signs of the sagging economy. "We had our lowest enrollment in a while this year." she said. "They had to ask the staff to take some weeks off work if they could afford it." 

With the collapsing teen-age job market, some teens are skipping the search for a paying job and opting instead for unpaid internships.

Jason Byer of San Rafael dodged the summer job hunt by teaching musical theater to children on an unpaid internship at Marin Theatre Company in Mill Valley.

"I wanted to do something this summer that would teach me to conduct myself in a professional manner," said the Northwestern University freshman. While Byer, a singer, actor and dancer, is not getting paid now, he believes the internship will pay off in experience and future connections.

As for myself, I found two jobs. I work one weekend morning a week at the Royal Sweet in San Anselmo and about eight hours a week at Vans, a skate store in San Rafael's Northgate mall. In my expansive free time, I am writing a screenplay about three teen-age boys who resort to illicit activities to earn money when they cannot find summer jobs.

Zoe Broad splits her time between her parents' homes in Fairfax and San Rafael and plans to study film at Wesleyan University in Connecticut in the fall. E-mail Zoe at  HYPERLINK "mailto:zoe_broad@yahoo.com" zoe_broad@yahoo.com.