Somewhere says high 20s.
I find it hard to believe that 7/10 people aged 16-19 who look for jobs land them.
I havn’t even received any emails telling me that I’ve been considered but rejected.
I know that people who havnt been actively looking don’t count.
In which country?
the United States
Keep in mind that teens might only have/want jobs that give them a couple of hours of work a week, sometimes even only a few shifts a month. These are jobs that adults simply can’t afford to accept.
That brings up the question of what the real unemployment rate is for any age category. It is always higher than the published number because some people simply give up and adopt another lifestyle. Those people don’t go into the calculation after that.
Are you looking for a number for all teenagers 13 and older or just those that work over certain number of hours a week and will file under a particular tax status such as independent (mainly 18 and 19 year olds)? Most teenagers make some money from somewhere so you have to choose your definition carefully if you want a good answer.
Oh sorry.
The BLS seems to group 19 year olds with the 16-18 category in one 16-19 age bracket so I’m looking for that specifically.
And I didn’t think of that adults would not accept some jobs. If I’m applying at retailers’ websites, it seems fair to think that many adults also work at retailers? Also I see a lot of people who can’t be much older than 18 and work as cashiers; how thick can the competition be for cashiers?
And still, 7/10 teens who look for jobs having jobs is hard to believe.
I have a hard time seeing how you could come up with any meaningful statistic. An adult who babysits one night a week and has no other income would probably be considered unemployed, but a teenager who does the same thing might consider it a perfectly good job. And do you start counting at age 13 (when someone is traditionally considered a “teenager”), or does it depend on the local labor laws? What if the labor laws allow a teen of a given age to take some jobs but not others: Is a 14-year-old who’s allowed to work as a farm hand, but doesn’t, unemployed? What about another teen of the same age who lives in the city?
I’m looking for 16-19 specifically, but if restrictions on underaged labor complicate generalization, then 18 to 21 or 22 will also suffice.
Table A-10. Selected unemployment indicators, seasonally adjusted (December 2010)
[ul]
[li] Total - 16 to 19 years - 25.4%[/li][li] Total - 16 to 17 years - 27.1%[/li][li] Total - 18 to 19 years - 24.5%[/li][li] Total - 20 to 24 years - 15.3%[/li][/ul]
The above is that “somewhere” that took all of two seconds to find. The U6 numbers don’t break down by age but it should be relatively simple to extrapolate the above numbers and determine the “real” numbers you seek.
The fact that you don’t have a job is not meaningful, it’s anecdotal. Are you questioning how the unemployment statistics are compiled, or whining that you can’t get a job? If it’s the second, filling in online applications for retailers in January isn’t going to get it done.
It is more complicated than that on lots of different levels. The most basic way to calculate unemployment rates are the number of people who are collecting unemployment although it includes other things as well. If I lost my job tomorrow, I would collect $625 a week in Massachusetts unemployment benefits from Massachusetts + $25 a week per dependent child. That is the max no matter how much you made before and it tops out quickly.
That means that I couldn’t take a job less than $15 an hour (30K a year) a year even if it was next to my house with no expenses or more realistically one that paid less than $40K without losing money and just staying at home. It seems simple but I had a really hard time explaining this to people when I have been unemployed for brief periods. Unemployed professionals can’t just take any job that pops up because it doesn’t literally doesn’t pay anything and I don’t think think that is the overall goal.
I don’t think you understand how those unemployment statistics are compiled and what they mean. Many teenagers in that age bracket are full-time students or just looking for part-time work and living at home and don’t need to fully support themselves. That is a whole different category of people that need to support themselves and a family fully. You can’t don’t that in many areas of the country anywhere near minimum wage. Teenagers make good employers for many different types of jobs and have an advantage when it comes to what they can take. You don’t see many 50 year old women running amazement park rides or dressing up as cartoon characters for example. Young men can do lawn care or basic construction work. Even being a supermarket cashier is physically taxing and easier on the young.
Whoof. That’s wrong. Accepting low-wage work on a short term basis will NOT cost you money:
Furthermore, every dollar you earn that IS subtracted from your UI check is a dollar that’s available later on, when that temp job goes south, or your hours get cut back.
Folks, tax laws and unemployment policies aren’t written by idiots – it is ALWAYS beneficial to earn money.
Employment numbers don’t care about the quality of the job or the needs of the job seeker: if the official numbers would consider the teenager babysitting as employed, they’d consider an adult doing that job as employed. And the threshold is ridiculously low–any paid work at all in the last week, even an hour, and you count exactly as if you were working 80 hours a week (note, this is for unemployment stats, not unemployment benefits. I have no idea about that).
I don’t think the OP is talking about school kids. I think the OP is talking about 16-19 year old non-students who are actively seeking employment. It doesn’t match his experience that 7/10 people in that range are finding jobs. However, that ignores all the people in that range who already have jobs. Say there are 1000 of these people (willing and able to work) in a town and 800 have jobs. Unemployment is at 20%, as all those people keep looking for work. Those 200 people can all look for work for a 100 years and not find a single job and unemployment will stay at 80% as long as those other people keep their jobs.
Yes I’ve visited that link before; it was linked in a news article, and it’s the official source. However, what I really want to know is the percent of people either aged 16-19 or 18-22 or any subdivision of either who hold jobs; if a person doesn’t hold a job but hasn’t been looking either, then he/she’d would also be considered unemployed, even though the BLS doesn’t account for people like that.
I am talking about school kids, but not particularly; anybody, including school kids.
Why not? I agree with you; I just want to know why. And no I’m not questioning the compilation procedure; I just want a fair estimate of how many people in those age ranges would be considered unemployed even if they haven’t looked actively. But this also brings up a related question: if 75/100 teens already have jobs, why is it so hard to land one? Manda said that as long as the 75 aren’t fired the rate will stand pat.
And I know it’s anecdotal, but I also have anecdotal evidence to the contrary; i.e., all the young people I see who have jobs.
The commonly cited unemployment figures from the Dept of Labor are people who had jobs, lost them, and have filed a claim for unemployment.
That’s much different than the number of teens who are looking for their first job and having trouble finding one. The DOL does track that – it’s called “Teen Participation in the Work Force.” I can’t find a link to the most current numbers (hoping another doper can help), but I do recall an article in the USA Today before the holidays which said the number of people age 16-19 who were working was 36%, down from the mid-50s a decade earlier.
Here is a chart from 2008 that USA Today might have referenced. Then I just found this from two weeks ago:
Teens suffer the highest rate of unemployment, drop out of labor force - mlive.com
A link within that story led me here:
Real Jobless Rate Double Official Government Rate
Extrapolating those numbers and applying it to teenage unemployment and one can infer a much higher “real” unemployment rate that the officially reported 25 percent or thereabouts. While I think many might sympathize with the plight of a higher teenage unemployment rate, unless teenagers are significant breadwinners who are contributing (significantly) to the household income, your whine is just that.
First of all, looking for a job in person is usually the more sucessful strategy. Even if you stop in at a Target and they just make you fill out their little kiosk-application which is the same as the online application. You have a chance to say hi to the manager, shake his hand, and give off the appearance of an upstanding and reliable person. You can ask a follow-up question like, “when do you think I will hear from you?” or “If I don’t hear from you, when should I stop by again?” or “how many people do you think you’ll be hiring this month?”
Second of all, January is generally a low time for hiring in the industries where teenage employment is common, such as retail and food service. It is usually the end of the fiscal year – meaning that large, publicly traded companies are not keen to add to their labor costs unecessarily – and a time when consumers make fewer purchases as they “recover” from Christmas buying, so fewer new employees are needed to service customers. Any jobs that are available will more likely go to temps who worked through the Christmas holiday, and are already known by management as reliable, effective, and not in need of training.
In other words, demand for retail hiring is always relatively poor in January and February and grows through the spring to peak in the fall:
http://www.wantedanalytics.com/insight/2010/11/18/retail-industry-hiring-demand-expected-to-grow-in-q1-of-2011/
Are you sure? I thought they used this phone survey.
In terms of teen participation, I suspect the increasingly competitive nature of college admissions/scholarships is a factor. With college running 20K a year at middle of the road state schools, it’s hard to make enough money at minimum wage (especially before they raised it) to make a dent. It’s a better strategy to be in 7 AP classes, two sports, the year book staff, the school musical, National Honor Society, your church mentoring program, and volunteer at the Humane Society and then get into a good school with finacial aid.
Well maybe for hs students but what about students already in college?
So if the unemployment rate for teens is 25%, does that mean that they had jobs but lost them then filed for unemployment?
Also, if the participation rate is 34%, does that mean:
that 34% of all teens have jobs
or
34% of teens who are looking for jobs have jobs?